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Nigel Farage Intensifies Fight Against UK Digital Pound
Nigel Farage escalates opposition to BOE digital pound, warning it enables state surveillance. BOE defends privacy safeguards as 50,000 consultation responses flood in.
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Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is stepping up his campaign against the Bank of England's digital pound plans, warning the state-backed currency would let the government monitor personal spending and erode financial privacy.
Farage released a statement Monday calling the project "a surveillance tool dressed up as convenience." He said the central bank's consultation process had not addressed how transaction data could be shielded from future governments. "The architecture itself creates a permanent record of every payment," he said. "That record can be accessed under the right legal conditions."
The Bank of England and the Treasury have said the digital pound, still in the design phase, would not give the government direct access to individual spending data. Privacy safeguards would be coded into the system, they said, and the central bank would not see personal information. Those assurances have not satisfied Farage and other privacy advocates. Critics argue that a central bank digital currency (CBDC) inevitably builds a payments ledger that authorities could tap under certain laws, even if the current design blocks that access.