Member

That is why I have worked with my colleagues in the DWP to design a new measure with a multitude of safeguards, protections and oversight provisions. These safeguards protect benefit recipients, protect their data and seek to minimise compliance costs. These include: restricting those on whom the DWP can collect information, limiting it just to recipients of specified benefits and excluding the state pension entirely; restricting the bodies from whom the DWP can demand information, limiting this to financial institutions; clearly limiting the purposes for which the DWP can collect information; tightly limiting the accounts in scope; limiting the type of information that can be requested, with clear provisions that certain data, such as information on transactions, cannot be shared, with penalties for financial institutions if they do so; creating routes for financial institutions to dispute notices and request reviews; requiring that a code of practice must be produced, providing guidance for the DWP and financial institutions on their obligations under this legislation; ensuring that, in cases of fraud and error, a human will make any decisions that affect benefit entitlement; and introducing new independent oversight for this measure and requiring the Government to provide the reviewers with requested information.