No independent monitor or claimant-side capacity for DWP bank-account surveillance

The Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Act 2025 (Royal Assent Dec 2025) lets DWP require banks to scan accounts of benefit claimants via Eligibility Verification Notices, rolling out from 2026 'test and learn' under codes of practice finalised May 2026. The ICO raised concerns during passage; the Act provides for review mechanisms, but there is no independent publication of error and false-positive rates, no civil-society observatory tracking EVN volumes and outcomes, and the welfare advice sector (Citizens Advice, CPAG, Law Centres) has essentially no data-rights expertise or tooling to help claimants understand or challenge wrongful flags. Big Brother Watch campaigned against the powers but has no post-enactment monitoring capacity; JUSTICE analysed the bill but not the rollout.

Roughly ten million accounts belonging to some of the least litigious, most sanction-exposed people in the country become subject to algorithmic financial screening, in a department with documented fraud-model bias issues. Without measured error rates and challenge capacity, harms will be invisible until a scandal.

An independently funded welfare-surveillance observatory publishing EVN volumes, error/false-positive rates and demographic patterns (via FOI, statutory review documents and bank disclosures), plus a data-rights toolkit, training and test-case pipeline for welfare advisers; a £500k-1m/year unit hosted by an existing advice or research body.

// Build now: First artefact: FOI-based EVN observatory publishing volumes and error rates, plus adviser data-rights toolkit hosted by an existing advice body.

Ten million vulnerable claimants' accounts fall under algorithmic screening from 2026, yet nobody is resourced to measure error rates or challenge wrongful flags; a monitor buildable now.