The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has posted a spate of new roles to spy on benefit claimants. Following jobs the Canary recently identified as part of its covert monitoring operations clamping down on next-to-non-existent benefit fraud, the DWP is now advertising 15 more positions.
Specifically, this particular job title – Covert Surveillance Officer – is one which first emerged under the Labour government’s Conservative predecessor. So, lo and behold, it’s another case of the Labour Party-led DWP picking up where the Tories left off – by particularly targeting chronically ill, disabled, and poor people not working.
DWP spying on claimants with new Covert Surveillance Officers
In 2024, the Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey first revealed in the Big Issue that the then Conservative-led DWP was recruiting for 25 ‘Covert Surveillance Officers’. Her damning exposé put the Tories’ plans for snooping on benefit claimants into the spotlight.
She detailed how the new roles:
are based in 20 locations across the country with salaries ranging from £29,500 to £33,979.
Moreover, she highlighted that:
The job’s description is very vague on detail as to what the job actually entails. It includes “leading in taking forward tasking requests”, sometimes leading “on the activities of the surveillance team” and “actively participating in surveillance operations”, with hours described as “unsociable”, starting early and ending late.
The ad does however state that hirees will be producing “evidential packages” which include obtaining and writing up witness statements to provide evidence of the activities witnessed. Successful applicants may be required to wear “covert audio equipment” and will also have to present the evidence obtained, which includes compiling and editing video and audio data.
Now, the DWP – under Labour – is advertising for more DWP staff to spy on claimants in precisely the same role:
Continuity-Tory through and through
The Canary’s Steve Topple recently identified associated jobs that confirmed its continuity-Tory covert surveillance plans.
And as he pointed out, these are also set against the backdrop of its grim plans to further embed surveillance of claimants within the DWP. It’s almost without irony that the Tories advertised these posts amidst its efforts to ram through their own version of this. It was in the form of the innocuously titled Data Protection and Digital Information Bill.
The bill was shelved thanks to the election. However, the red-tie Tories couldn’t let things lie. Specifically, as Topple detailed:
In parallel, the government is pushing to legislate for DWP access to claimants’ bank accounts under the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill. This would allow banks to share transaction data and allow the government to recover overpayments directly, without a court order. Privacy groups argue this is tantamount to mass surveillance, with algorithms scanning the finances of claimants—often without any suspicion of wrongdoing.
However, the fact is, that Labour is following through with the same approach is nothing surprising. In the broader context of benefits cuts, and boss Liz Kendall’s long-pre-election historic rhetoric maligning claimants, it’s hardly off-brand.
But the DWP values ‘diversity and inclusion’ didn’t you know?
An anonymous DWP employee who previously spoke to Charlton-Dailey had highlighted how it was likely that the department’s Covert Surveillance Officers will be sorely underequipped to understand disabled people’s lived realities. In particular, they underscored how they would not have medical knowledge or training. In other words, they would not understand the “nuance” of life with a fluctuating condition.
But be under no illusions: this is intentional. This is a department that operates on the assumption of claimant wrongdoing. It’s no accident that Labour’s DWP ministers have spent their entire time in power, and much of their time in opposition before that, manufacturing outrage over benefit fraud.
It has meticulously constructed the ‘us and them’ story. It has designed it to divide the community between ‘those who really need it’ and people who it frames as gaming the system.
Of course, the benefit cuts have been a clear example of this ‘deserving disabled’ versus ‘non-deserving disabled’ ideology in action.
What it comes down to is that a DWP that persistently under-approves disability benefits – with staggering rates overturned at appeal – is arbitrating over who’s ‘telling the truth’ about their condition. Covert Surveillance Officers’ jobs aren’t to be a compassionate, chronic illness, disability, and trauma-informed assessors of claimant’s lived reality. It’s to ‘catch them out’ and invalidate those lived realities of invisible disabilities and fluctuating conditions. It’s to judge they’re ‘not disabled enough’ for support. And ergo, some wannabe undercover detective playing dress-up for the DWP decides who is lying about their needs.
If all that weren’t bad enough, the ad for the roles proudly proclaims, without a shred of irony, that:
At DWP we value diversity and inclusion and actively encourage and welcome applications from everyone, including those that are underrepresented in our workforce. We consider visible and non-visible disabilities, neurodiversity or learning differences, chronic medical conditions, or mental ill health.
Examples include dyslexia, epilepsy, autism, chronic fatigue, or schizophrenia.
These will of course be all the same people the surveillance officers will likely seek to criminalise.
Fraud is a myth: how many times does it need saying?
The simple fact is ultimately that so-called benefit fraud is infinitesimally small to virtually non-existent anyway.
As the Canary has continued to underscore time and again, the DWP itself considers Personal Independence Payment (PIP) fraud to be so minimal, it marks it at 0%. We’ll say that again: zero. No fraud. So the government isn’t wasting £35k a pop on Covert Surveillance Officers to go after PIP claimants right? RigHT?
The fact is, we don’t know, because the job ads don’t specify precisely what the role entails.
But even if it’s targeting Universal Credit claimants, where the government claims there’s currently £5.2bn in fraud, it’s not exactly any more reassuring.
As Topple has explained before, most what the DWP classifies as ‘fraud’ is:
just based on assumptions and guesswork.
For instance, it considers “high suspicion Causal link’ fraud to include situations like:
- Claimants terminating their claim
- A claimant that “stops engaging” when asked to send in evidence
- Or reporting a change of circumstances after a review.
The latter is despite the fact the DWP median wait time for review decisions for PIP for instance, is over 9 months. Obviously, a lot can change for claimants in that time.
There could of course be any number of reasons a person terminates their claim or stops engaging with the DWP. Not least among these is that the labyrinthine system is inaccessible for many and has actively been proven to cause people’s health to deteriorate.
Spying and suspicion: the DWP in a nutshell
Let’s be perfectly clear: these roles aren’t about tackling benefit fraud. This is about singling out claimants – that is, chronically ill and disabled people, and all those the collaborating state and capitalist system oppresses and marginalises into poverty. It’s about building the narrative that they’re defrauding the system so they seem like valid targets of vitriol. It’s so the government can scapegoat these communities, without ever facing up to the real systemic causes of inequality.
The DWP has so institutionalised ableist stigma, that there’s no getting away from the fact that treating chronically ill and disabled claimants with suspicion, was always a feature, not a flaw. Now, the department posting these roles should make that fact inarguable.
Featured image via the Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.