To think this “crackdown” on benefit fraud is absolutely pathetic

Please say these cunts will be voted out next year..

What happens though for things like birthday or Xmas gifts of money ? Wil that be seen as undeclared income ? Will it trigger a stop in benefits ?

pack - local

I think eventually dla and pip will have to be accounted for much like my pack authority local offer for dc getting Middle rate or higher dla and a personal budget- each year you have to submit a form and all receipts for monitoring of every penny . I think soon we will have to prove what dla is spent on too 😢 just another job for exhausted parents of disabled dc

They already do it. Where fraud is suspected DWP can request data on the claimants’ bank account to build their case, and they carry out data matching. The new powers would just allow them access sooner, so the theory goes that they can detect fraud sooner.

@echt - yes very tough. The key thing is AI is cheap. You will not have a human being to engage with on this. And you can't manipulate AI or ask for specific circumstances to be taken into account. It's just no, money off, account debited if it seems overpayment.

The other issue is that the AI is going to know more and more about you and your spending compared to thousands of accounts, with millions of data points. Good luck arguing against it. I think it will be nearly impossible because it's actually designed to eliminate the idea of exceptions.

Unless it's actively discriminatory then good luck challenging it legally. You would need a judge to pick through the claim, and that's going to be hard to do to even challenge this policy more broadly.

One of the new powers being considered is collecting information about where and how benefit claimants spend their money. It’s not difficult to see how they would use this information in relation to disability benefits. These benefits are to support claimants with the cost of disability and they can be spent however the claimant likes - in theory. The reality will probably involve some way to remove benefits from those deemed not to be spending enough on disability related things. So if you’re disabled and have Sky TV for example, they can see how much you spend on it - sod the fact that you may have it because you find it too difficult to go out socially. The Tories would have all disabled people who can’t work bundled up in a corner quietly waiting to die if they thought they could get away with it.

Banging the benefits fraud drum works a treat though

This.

This is what happens and will continue to happen.

They already do data matches with bank accounts. I've been through that myself and in my case they've got it wrong and claimed I've got double the amount of savings I do have.

@MissLou0 It's because the Government's real worry isn't the money itself but a shrinking workforce. Once you understand that the purpose of the Government is to make the lives of the older generations nice and comfy and that they don't give a shit about anyone else earning less than £200k it all begins to make sense.

The Government has developed the UK into a place that is a bit rubbish to live in and they are petrified that the result will be ever worsening labour shortages which means that the grey army have to pay move for goods and services and get unhappy about it. So, to counteract this the Government has ensured that even the genuinely disabled struggle to get benefits in order that they do some kind of work; they've made it harder to leave by ending free movement with the EU (although this backfired when EU workers left), they've made university increasingly unattractive in the hope that people go to work in crappy service jobs at 18 instead, they've extended the retirement age (for us, not for the grey army) and they've increased taxes on working people to make it harder to save for early retirement or to fund single income households.

Fraud is fraud, but what about the innocent disabled people who genuinely can't support themselves, who will no doubt be caught up?

The poor or benefit frauds aren't the problem in this country but the rich are but of course as usual, the fascist newspapers and our corrupted gov and those in power will have you believe that our ship is sinking because of this thus diverting the attention away from the main cause. But time and time again, even with the most recent events on the news, people are still jumping on the bandwagon with the narrative they are pulling out from their asses to justify their horrific contribution. I guess the gov and media are good at feeding the majorities inner prejudices.

Many ordinary people use tax avoidance, I have ISAs and DH gifted me shares so we can both take advantage of the dividend tax allowance which has been cut this year and being cut even further next year or is it just very rich people you want to stop.

However, if someone is suspected of benefits fraud, yes of course their accounts should be monitored

How does that work? Go on.

There’s always one in benefit threads isn’t there ? You rightly say you can’t see a persons’ tax affairs easily. My question is what makes you think you can see a persons’ disability or health condition so easily ?

Firstly, there is nothing wrong in claiming PIP and working. It’s not an out of work benefit, it’s not taxable and it’s not means tested. The assessment the claimant has had in order to claim it will have had their ability to work taken into account.

And unless you know the specifics of a persons’ disability or condition, and how it affects them 24 hours a day, you’re privy to the details of their benefit claim, and you have appropriate medical qualifications to challenge the medical evidence they will have had to provide in support of that claim, as well as the opinion of the medic by whom they will have been interviewed on behalf of DWP, then you really aren’t in a position to judge whether they are capable of work or not are you ? And the overwhelming likelihood is that no-one is committing fraud. Thankfully DWP are now cracking down and fining people who waste their time maliciously reporting genuine benefit claimants, just because they ‘don’t look disabled enough’.

This has already happened in Australia, again by a cunty right-wing government. I posted it upthread. It's fucking frightening:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robodebt_scheme

Bear in mind many 'benefits unclaimed' will be people like us when DH was made redundant (this was many years ago) - he did look at it but frankly the number of hours involved in signing on and 'job searching' with them which appeared to involve many visits to the job centre would have impacted on his ability to find & do self employed work (as he was setting up by himself, and involved travel often at the drop of a hat), so it was cheaper (travelling costs) and easier (travelling time, not being tied to 'meetings' at the JC) to not claim, or people like Gran who could have claimed carers allowance and have carers (but at the time as I had small children, it was easy and nicer for her for me to do it).

Next step is telling the poor what they can spend their money on. The tories will love thinking up ways to punish Gladys from poorsville for buying an unnecessary bag of werthers originals with her pension credit while they stuff their necks with taxpayer subsidised champagne and caviar. Think I'm over exaggerating? Watch this space and see. It's never been more vital to vote them out.

Theft is theft. All theft it wrong, including both benefits fraud and tax evasion.

Monitoring all bank accounts in receipt of benefits is a ridiculous invasion of privacy and will likely prove very expensive to enact too. Not all bank accounts should be monitored just as not all business owners should be assumed to be tax dodgers and on and on.

However, if someone is suspected of benefits fraud, yes of course their accounts should be monitored.

As with everything, it is a nuanced subject… but, yet again it is “big picture” solutions and black and white thinking from our government.

Be born here. Go to work. Study maths. Or it’s the poorhouse / Rwanda for you.

My son has been waiting since March for his PIP - aparently you dont need it if you have HF autism

You really shouldn’t have to pay to get help with filling in the forms. Have a look online because there are numerous organisations who will offer free help - including disability charities and MacMillan for cancer sufferers.

The lying PIP assessors are the ones the government should be going for

@Startingagainandagain I am not sure if it could be challenged in court as by claiming income based benefits you are actually allowing the DWP to share your information with other organisations to detect fraud and for other reasons, I have never claimed income based benefits myself, however I do help pensioners claim pension credit, on the end of the form under where the claimant signs is a section called how the DWP collects and uses information with a link to the DWPS Personal Information Charter and that actually makes quite scary reading knowing exactly what powers they already have, I am assuming that when you claim working age income based benefits it follows the same formula. I disagree with the new proposals BTW and hope it is dropped

I was pointing out that it’s defined as a contribution based benefit and is paid from the same funding sources as other contribution based benefits, including sickness and disability benefits - a fact which you omitted from your post. And as such it’s the biggest outlay in terms of those benefits. So the speculation is that if the pension bill could be reduced, there would potentially be more funds available for other contribution based benefits.