The phrase “surveillance state” normally crops up in connection with national security. Since the first duty of government is to the safety of the citizen, runs the standard script, then the faintest hope of preventing a single bomb can justify any amount of snooping on blameless citizens. It is an argument that this newspaper has often challenged, and for pragmatic as much as for principled reasons. But after the secrets of the Panama Papers escaped into the world, the striking thing is just how limp are the efforts of the same surveillance state when it comes to keeping track of the financial dealings of the rich.
In the light of all the shell firms and confected financial flows facilitated by Mossack Fonseca, one might have thought that – for practical reasons of securing the tax base – Her Majesty’s government would long ago have exerted the considerable leverage that it possesses over crown dependencies and overseas territories, to enable it to follow the money. Historically, however, there has been deep reluctance to do anything much, and even as pressure is belatedly applied, half-measures are deemed good enough. Overseas territories will continue to be spared from UK law on company registers, and there will be no requirement for a publicly accessible database of beneficial ownership, the UK satisfying itself instead with officials being able to inspect the information of service providers. Foreign office minister James Duddridge nonetheless praised such incremental efforts as “superb progress”.
The difference between the British state’s nosiness in matters of security and matters of wealth is striking, but it is – perhaps – one Whitehall might defend with reference to that old line about the paramount importance of safety. The difficulty with running that argument is that another contrast has become evident this week, a big difference in the appetite for surveilling the finances of the rich, as opposed to the poor. After David Cameron was pressed by the SNP’s Angus Robertson in the Commons on Wednesday, the government confirmed that it now deploys some 3,700 people to investigate benefit claimants, very often for modest sums, as opposed to the mere 700 Revenue staff who are tasked with looking into the affairs of, roughly speaking, the top 1%. Such an imbalance of snooping resources looks less like the product of businesslike book-balancing than divisive class politics.
At the same time, that blend of spying, strictures and fear-inducing penalties, which has slowly warped the process of claiming unemployment benefits into something more like being on probation, is starting to be extended from the jobless towards the low-paid. Iain Duncan Smith quietly took powers to impose so-called “in-work conditionality” several years ago, which in principle allowed poor workers to have their tax credits docked if they were judged not to be striving sufficiently to increase their wages or their hours of employment. Relatively little has happened in practice, because administrative chaos in welfare reform has precluded any dramatic advance in the frontiers of busy-bodying. The first experiments are, however, under way, and we reported this week on how one working woman from Widnes found herself “sanctioned” for taking a holiday.
The proper balance between individual privacy and the common good will often be contentious. But it should never be tipped by whether you are rich or poor.
