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So we chatted and said one of our pals in the pub the other night, Mark.

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And I said, Mark, what do you think about the fact that next year in 2025 DWP will be

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wanting access to all your bank accounts, will be, you know, checking through your details.

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And he said, oh, I don't need to worry about that, Eric.

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He said, you know, I've never claimed benefits in my life.

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DWP will be interested in me.

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Now, Mark's quite well, always been quite well paid.

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He's recently retired.

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He's 66.

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And, you know, I've never, never had any time out to work, never had to claim any disability

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benefits of his life.

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So he's not really connected in with the benefit system, doesn't know a huge amount about it.

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And he was quite surprised actually when I told him, now that he's 67 and although he

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has lots of personal pensions and, you know, work-based pensions, which, you know, seem

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really well off, he also has a state pension.

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What Mark didn't realize is, you know, state pension is a benefit in the same way that

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job seekers allowance is a benefit.

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So you know, with job seekers allowance, you need to have paid national children to be

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entitled to it.

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The same with state pension.

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It's a contributory benefit.

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So Mark was under the impression that because he had quite a lot of private pensions that

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he didn't come under the scope of DWP's bank account checks, unfortunately does.

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And any of us who are claiming state pension benefit or what we call state pension will

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fall under the same remit as well.

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Which surprises a lot of people.

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Now I'm only 56, but if I was at state retirement age and I was claiming state retirement pension,

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then I think I'd find it's quite intrusive and the reason for that would be that with

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state pension, there's not a huge dependence on what your income is.

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So it's a contributory benefit, as we know, and you need to have paid national insurance

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to be entitled to it.

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However, even if you're a millionaire, you're still entitled to it.

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So I kind of think that the DWP saying what they're trying to do is stop fraud is it doesn't

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really fit with most state pensioners.

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Now I know, so the DWP have said that they've got two reasons for doing this.

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Okay, so the first one is to verify that people don't have undeclared sources of income.

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Now that doesn't really impact the state pension because it's not means tested.

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So you can have any level of income you like and it wouldn't affect the amount of benefit

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that you get.

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But the second reason is that you're not claiming benefits or state benefits that you're not

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entitled to because you're out of the country.

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So I suppose if you're out of the country, you need to declare you're out of the country.

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From checking the bank accounts, they can verify if you're nine months on the run and

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all your shopping is done in the Algarve, then the potentially going to ask questions about

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whether you are based in the Algarve or you're based in the UK and whether your tax position

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is correct.

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But that feels like a secondary concern to me if this really is about stopping fraud

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increasing revenue for the inland revenue, then I wonder whether including people who

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just get state pension is the right thing to do.

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I mean, many of you will wonder whether this is the right thing to do for any benefit.

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You know, let me know what you think, think of that in the comments.

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So this is a big change.

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So it's not just that the checking them two things, what they're also doing is doing data

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matching. So we're in the past, if you were claiming house benefits, for example, they'd

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ask you for bank accounts and details of where your income is and they could scan them bank

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accounts and get various bits of information out to them.

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Now what they're doing is they're looking at what bank accounts you declare, looking

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at what bank accounts are kind of under your name, what's been declared by the other government

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departments, what's been declared by the local council and we cross-checking all these things.

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I suppose there is a risk there that say you're a pensioner and you claim a pension and credit

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and you fill the forms into your, to the best of your ability.

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However, they come across a Bradford and Bingley account from 30 years ago that you forgot

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you didn't know you had, you know, are you going to feel when they, when they challenge

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you about this that you're being accused of fraud, but actually it was an oversight.

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I'm not saying they will, but there will be a lot of legitimate concerns about this where

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people feel that they've got to do a lot of checking, go and find an old bank statement.

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It's gotten quite an illness on a lot of people really to validate everything before they

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make the declarations for the D.B.

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Peterstar checking.

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So there is, it is a big change and some people are saying it's the thin end of the wedge.

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You know, if they do in the future decide that stay petitions become unaffordable, they

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want to means test it, then this is a perfect way to do that.

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And so I've always said that I can't see a state pension at any point will become means

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tested because if it does, it's, you know, hugely expensive.

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However, if this is all done with AI, links into bank accounts dragging down huge amounts

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of data and then the analysis is done by a computer, maybe it won't be overly burdensome.

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Maybe this is a kind of way in the future for the state to reduce the costs of mean

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testing because mean testing is very expensive and bureaucratic thing to do when it's done

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by humans, when it's done by AI with massive sources of data across all bank accounts and

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all tax centers and all departments, maybe it becomes, you know, a much cheaper exercise

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and more possible for them to do.

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So they're my thoughts anyway.

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So we're looking at next year here now.

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And what we need to think about in terms of preparing for this change is, you know, making

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sure we know where all our bank accounts are getting our records straight because when

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DWP ask us, we're on one year's and what kind of bank accounts we've got, we need to provide

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the answers.

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Last thing we want is to slip up, miss something out.

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And then when they do their ultimate analysis, do a lot of calculations, they come back to

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us and say, Hey, mister, why haven't you claimed or declared this particular source of income?

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They do say potentially that there will be quite a few people who it runs the other way

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for where, you know, people have declared a certain set of income a while ago and the

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money has gone down and down and down.

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Once the DWP validate what's going through the bank accounts, they become back and say,

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Oh, you know, you are entitled to some additional money so that your, your benefits will correct

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themselves and you will be getting more in terms of benefits.

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Now that weren't a fact, people who claim just state benefits, but potentially it might

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claim some particularly more vulnerable and particularly, you know, very old vulnerable

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people who don't keep up on software, the records, maybe haven't done an update on the

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finances with the DWP for quite some time.

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Anyway, it's quite a divisive thing.

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You know, there's a lot of chatter on the internet about this.

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So I don't know what your thoughts are, but I would love to hear them.

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So let me know what you think.

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Cheers, Nam.