DWP warns people who avoid contact their benefits 'will be suspended'
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has issued an update over "suspending payments". Neil Couling, senior responsible owner for Universal Credit, reached out in the Work and Pensions Committee to quiz the DWP over its use of technology.
Sir Peter Schofield asked: "The Bill sets out quite a number of safeguards—in fact, across all of the powers that we have. Neil, do you want to come in with some detail?" Neil Couling: replied: "It might help if I set out that these are people who have accepted that there has been fraud. They accept that they have a debt to pay back to the taxpayer, and they are not paying it back. The Bill provides for the various powers you mentioned, such as driving licences or being able to go to somebody’s bank account, which HMRC can do now for tax debts where people are not paying their tax debts.
"We give the opportunity for people to pay this money back. It is not like we go straight to these powers. It is almost stepping through, and these are conversations. I might be told, “Well, Mr Couling, you owe us this money. You have the ability to pay it back. We could take this money direct from your bank account. Would you like to pay us?”
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He added that there are sometimes cases where the department believes a person is deliberately avoiding contact, such as when they are abroad, in which case officials will cut off their cash. Mr Couling explained: "In those sort of cases, we would suspend the case and invite them to contact us about that issue."
"The whole process—this is the point of the powers—is designed to encourage people to pay what they owe. It is not that we say, “You are a fraudster. Right, we are going straight to your bank account.” It does not work in that way."
Ben Obese-Jecty said: "My question is about AI. Other than humans making the final decision, what safeguards do you have against the Department’s AI tools leading to biased decision making?" Sir Peter replied: "AI is an umbrella term, isn’t it? In this case we have only one machine-learning system model in live running at the moment, and that is for universal credit advances. We are working on other machine-learning tools in the background on other areas of loss, such as undeclared living together, self-employment and capital. The one area where we are using this in live running is universal credit advances so we can identify risky transactions before they get paid.
"The point about the way we use it is that this is a tool to guide our humans, to guide our colleagues, to guide people to work to identify the cases that need further investigation. We would never do anything to switch off a benefit or not make a payment off the back of just a machine alone. The machine is there to guide people and to guide the way that we work. We make sure that everything we do is lawful, proportionate and ethical, and our use of data and technology follows all of those processes.
"We have safeguards in place, but the most important safeguard, as I say, is that we do not use machine learning to make any decisions. It is a tool that guides our people to focus in on the cases that have the most risk."