It's with interest that I read Birmingham County Council has introduced telephone lie detector tests, sorry voice stress tests, for claimants calling their benefit office. Whilst on the face of it, this seems to have purported benefits (apparently Harrow Council has saved £110,000 in three months during a pilot scheme), I wonder at what costs?

I would think such measures begin to subtly change the dynamics of the claimant-staff interactions (already quite fraught one would imagine), introducing further elements of tension and suspicion. Added to this are the major failings of lie detection systems, and possible procedural inequalities; staff can decide on the basis of their conversation and the lie detector results whether to require more evidence of entitlement (or is this front-line autonomy?).

Looking at this initiative within the context of our Trust & Local Government project, I suspect that local authorities such as Birmingham may be sacrificing a better long term relationship with their citizens for a dubious procedural techno-fix.

(Here’s John Hutton making the government’s case for this kind of approach, back in April).

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