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

This directly feeds into @CherryMyBrandy comment: the economy is set up against almost everyone other than the uber rich who are just getting richer and richer off the backs of everyone else

Maybe it's because I work in an industry that is literally designed to manipulate people into losing money to benefit the already extremely wealthy, but it absolutely baffles me how the general population don't see what's happening and how going along with being pitched against each other in almost every aspect of our lives keeps the "powerful" in their position.

“It’s not our fault that everyone is working 55 hour weeks, barely able to afford food and struggling to heat their homes! How dare you! It’s the fault of those lazy shiftless benefits scroungers!”

Do you think we distracted them lads? Let’s celebrate in the gentleman’s club. Stripclub later?

Its not that easy (anymore) to just come to jersey and set up companies and trusts. We are heavily regulated (contrary to popular belief). And taxes are paid here. But with ways to mitigate your exposure (as with the Uk).

high net worths coming here have to go through rigorous screening (more so since the Ukrainian war started). They have to have a certain level of income and a certain level of wealth. They have to prove that they’ll contribute x amount to the island on an annual basis. And they have to give up their Uk residence and domicile.

Fotally agree; noone should be defrauding benefitd or evading tax for financial gain.

It’s not a small invasion of privacy, it’s a breach of human rights applied to everyone who claims to catch the minority of people who claim fraudulently or who have made an honest mistake. How long before they then start deciding what people can spend the paltry sum they get in benefits?

This was brought in by the Australian Liberal (AKA vile Tory cunts) government for "certain" communities, i.e. Indigenous Australians, to limit what benefit recipients could spend their money on, i.e. NOT drugs, porn or alcohol

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cashless_Welfare_Card#:~:text=The%20Cashless%20Welfare%20Card%2C%20also,responsible%20behaviour%22%20by%20not%20allowing

Can't find the link but remember the hoo-ha when it was later suggested that this be extended to all benefit recipients, i.e state pensioners.

The cashless card was abolished by the Labor government in 2023.

The point of all this is it can be done, and this particular scrutiny of those on benefits is the thin end of the wedge.

I agree. Go after all of them, including the people claiming benefits just because they don’t want to work.

Maybe the DWP and HMRC could collect the half a billion quid of child support that is owing in this country to (mostly) mothers.

But that would move money from (mostly) men to women and children, and isn't much of a priority. Easier to go after these low-paid women on UC who are caught in the tangled wires of structural inequalities while bringing up millions of children.

I think the stress differential is a new sex-based inequality. We're an odd country that let men walk away and live an easy life, leaving women and children to lives of stress, low wages, benefits, benefit investigations, insecure housing and societal criticism. As pp have said, all very mid-Victorian.

Apologies to Amazon for forgetting to mention the NMW & NLW are the same starting from 1st April 2023 for all workers aged 23+. Below that age a NMW still applies.

That means a family of 5 (kids age 12m, 5 & 11y) with both parents working at amazon would be able to claim some universal credit based on parent 1 working 22h parent 2 working 40h. Baby in childcare 12h week.

The national living wage is not as much as you think. Nor is Amazon's amazing wage

A few figures.

Delivery driver rates start at £9.52ph doesn't mention age, could be s/e which is worse than waged at that rate.

Amazon warehouse operative base rate (23+) £11.00

NMW £10.42 (23+)

NLW £10.42 (23+)

From the Government website "In October, we recommended the NLW should increase by 9.7 per cent (92 pence) in April 2023 to £10.42."

Even I can envisage the political and commercial advantages that can follow from using this as a way to trial AI monitoring of purchases and linking it with travel, interpersonal connections and online behaviour. Stick in a monitoring requirement for claimants to prove Internet job searching and you've developed enough integration with the data to be able to link it up with health insurance/refusals of cover and profitable areas, politics, personal ethics, and private thoughts.

Add in the ability to influence via algorithm as was done by Cambridge Analytica and the potential profit and control is boundless.

But they've got to start somewhere. Which as ever, is with benefit claimants.

Exactly this!

1000%

That didn't take long before pensioners got the blame lol

There is virtually no fraud, though, with pensions. Age dictates the eligibility.

Which is why the benefits being checked are "working age" benefits.🙄

Well if we just concern ourselves with the super rich based in or investing in the U.K., for starters you can change the law so that property purchased in the UK needs to have a transparent registered owner.

Maybe so, but you'll never eliminate the basis of why this happens, which that a lot of Conservatives don't like the welfare state. They hate it, so spend much time and energy trying to make it as difficult as possible to claim, and in cases of fraud, to them, it's worth it.

The system for receiving any public money was that the local well to do judged your circumstances for themselves and then maybe you got some money under the poor laws.

Munificent charity is more enjoyable for the well to do, irrespective of the human cost... see big society and the rise of the food bank, which is completely shameful in a country as well off as the UK.

I think they will spend more trying to fight benefit fraud than they will recover from the few fraudulent claims they find.

PP who are saying benefit fraud is illegal and needs to be dealt with are missing the point. Of course it’s not good, and ideally wouldn’t be happening, no one is disputing that; but as a proportion of the money lost by the government it’s tiny, and less than what the government gains in unclaimed benefits. So it’s totally disproportionate and unfair to put ALL benefit claimants under draconian measures, when there are far far larger sums of money that the government could be chasing that it chooses not to.

A small amount of privacy being invaded isn’t much in exchange for money to live on.

It’s not a small invasion of privacy, it’s a breach of human rights applied to everyone who claims to catch the minority of people who claim fraudulently or who have made an honest mistake. How long before they then start deciding what people can spend the paltry sum they get in benefits?

People don’t loose fundamental human rights because they are out of work, or have a disability or care for someone else. If you’re happy for their human rights to be set aside, I take it you’d be equally happy for your own to be compromised at the whim of the government.

My friend is a benefit fraud investigator for the DWP and the figures that make up the amount that the taxpayer loses because of benefit fraud is only from the amount of people that they actually catch. There's loads more people doing it that are not caught out, I know a lot of people in my area that are claiming for things they shouldn't but until they are caught they won't be a statistic.

Fraud is fraud regardless if it's tax, benefits or inheritance etc we all pay for it in the long run.

I do not think the government should ever be given the power to routinely check bank accounts. That's a slippery slope.

Difficult to change how the world has evolved. The super rich can live where they want as countries welcome them on special tax deals, like the non-doms Starmer hopes to tax to pay for everything. (It won’t).

They have property owned in offshore trusts and companies, how do you propose shutting those down, when they can be moved from, say Jersey to another tax haven in the flick of a button?

My friends employer has moved to Switzerland with his private jet because he, like others thinks Labour will target him.

Is anyone comfortable with benefit fraud? I think fraud of any kind isn’t ok. Both tax fraud and benefit fraud mean less in our shared pot to pay for state run services. What I object to, is putting people through an awful process just to get their basic needs met. Just because a small minority of people claiming benefits scam the system, you shouldn’t tar everybody with the same brush. It’s dog whistle politics and trying to keep the rabid DM reading voters on-side.

There would be much greater increase in the shared pot to fund services if wealth were taxed properly. Lots of very wealthy people agree.

I had to rely on benefits for a short time in my 20s. It was humiliating enough without being immediately viewed as a fraudster. It helped me to stick with studying and I’m now a professional with an above average salary.

We need both better solutions for tax fraud and tax dodging, better solutions for actual benefit fraud and we need to tax wealth properly - so that we can find services properly and reduce the disgusting level of inequality in this country that creates a vicious cycle of the wealthy getting more and more of the resource and those with the least getting less and less.

Benefit fraud is illegal, whilst I get your sentiment, the number of people I've known who have worked cash in hand whilst claiming benefits, pretended their partner lived at their mums or worst of all pretending your disability is worse than it is is shockingly high from where I used to live. Benefits need to be fair, and the system for things like pip, which is an in work benefit needs to be better administered but that still doesn't mean someone (my old neighbour) should be allowed to pretend they couldn't work due to their back yet did a couple of physical hobbies and drove a minicab on the sly.

Anyone receiving certain benefits or top-ups will, allegedly, have their back accounts checked monthly.

https://metro.co.uk/2023/11/06/benefits-claimants-to-have-bank-accounts-checked-monthly-in-crackdown-19779875/

I agree. This government is hellbent on targeting those that they perceive to be beneath them. The scale of aggressive tax avoidance and tax evasion is astronomical in comparison to that of benefit fraud, yet nothing ever gets done about that.
The tax dodging owners of the right wing papers are more than happy to play along, but just wish that the general public wouldn’t fall for it. Divide and rule innit!

So it’s morally correct OK to live in a country, make money in that country, benefit from the state run services in that country but deliberately use tax loops (e.g. creating off shore companies) to avoid paying your fair share?