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

[MissLou0]

We lose hundreds of billions from tax avoidance compared to 1 billion on benefit fraud and nothing is done about it, because those are the Tory donors. Michelle Mone just stole £28 million from taxpayers for her PPE scam, she’s not in trouble, and she of course also hides her hundreds of millions offshore.

We lose a small amount from benefit fraud, and as a result everyone who claims any sort of benefit including disability benefits banks are going to be monitored.

The graph below doesn’t even scratch the surface of how much is lost to tax avoidance. For example Rupert Murdoch is worth £17 billion and he hasn’t paid tax in years, personal tax or on his businesses. And he’s ONE person. These people are not targeted yet the most desperate and vulnerable are.

This is completely ignored by the media as the majority of newspaper owners are hiding their money offshore.

I’m in a situation where I don’t need to claim any benefits but I have family who are disabled who have had to fight for even the tiniest amount to live on, and they are now having to deal with this invasion of privacy which will make not even 0.000001% of what cracking down on tax avoidance would.

Also, some people have their benefits paid into someone else's account. I know a few people who do that, as they simply can not look after their own finances.
Will the bank accounts of people not even claiming for themselves also be subject to such scrutiny?

Oh God yes. I hadn't even thought of that. What a shitshow honestly!

I would imagine this would be flagged up if the DWP are monitoring the account into which your benefits are paid. They would see money being transferred out into another account in your name, so obviously that would attract attention.

I have my mum’s benefit paid into my account - she has dementia and I have her LPA and am her representative with DWP. So my account would definitely be up for scrutiny even though the benefits paid into it are mums’. AI bot wouldn’t know the difference and other payments going into that account would be flagged as potential fraud and mums’ benefits stopped while they look into it. See what I mean by not thought through properly ?

I’d support that ! Government have lost sight of who is supposed to be serving who haven't they ? Perhaps if we all got together and lobbied for the finances of MPs to be scrutinised in the same way - with particular note to the claims for expenses, in light of the absolute shit show a few years ago. And while we’re at it maybe we should ask for access to the records of how many in the House of Lords sign the attendance book to claim their £300 a day, then leave. That particular gravy train should have been stopped years ago.

This is the problem with AI.

A few years ago I was investigated after an ex made a vexatious report on me. I offered my bank statements to the DWP but they declined. I assume because they'd already looked into them. But that will have been a PERSON looking at it.
My benefits were never even suspended at that time. Automation will be a different scenario I suspect.

This has the potential to do a lot of harm to a lot of innocent people.

Yeah, but those who are not working and of age to work and can work from home are fucking up the economy by not contributing to it. Just on principle.

Totally agree. The AI system will likely be programmed to look for the slightest hint of anything out of the ordinary and benefits will be stopped as soon as something is flagged up. It will then be up to the claimant to prove they’re not doing anything wrong. While that may be easy to prove in most cases, it’s the devastating effect of benefit being stopped while the claimant is investigated that will do the most damage.

Depends what the AI bot is instructed to look for I suppose. Payments in and savings over £6000 and I'm fine. It definitely won't find that. It can clear my overdraft if it likes though 😂

You do realise that it’s the very most sick and disabled people they’re proposing to force these proposals on ? People who have legitimately been assessed as not fit for any work ? And where are all of these WFH vacancies going to come from ? How many WFH jobs do you know of that don’t ask the employee to come into the office at all ? I’m all for disabled people working if they can, but the government knows they’re targeting the most vulnerable people. They can’t magically change the fact that these people are genuinely too sick and disabled to work. So they move the goalposts so that they are assessed differently and hey presto, suddenly most of them can work.

Working from home is still work... and some people can not work.
Plus, who is going to employ someone who has maybe been out the workforce for years... and has no IT skills. WFH roles don't tend to be entry level.

A relative of mine was asked to provide bank statements to DWP as part of a routine check. He was called into the office and cautioned that he was being investigated for fraud. Why ? One of the bank statements had flagged up a direct debit into a post office savings account that he had forgotten to declare to DWP. There was only a couple of hundred in there but it was enough to get his benefit stopped while they investigated it, and it scared the hell out of him. That’s the kind of thing that’s likely to be flagged by AI, and it’s enough to drop many people in the you know what if they’ve genuinely forgotten something like this.

This is the whole point isn’t it ? Once again conditionality and sanctions are being introduced before they’ve thought through where all these WFH vacancies are going to come from or how they’re going to convince employers to take on severely disabled and very sick people who, in some cases have been unemployed for years, as employees. Not to mention how they’re going to solve the problem of those who are on the NHS waiting list for treatment/surgery before they are fit to work. And it speaks volumes about the lack of proper consideration that they’re threatening sick and disabled people with cutting off access to free prescriptions if they don’t engage with the new rules. Talk about short sighted - you couldn’t make this shit up !!

Is there a crackdown tho? There's always been a "crackdown" on 'benefit' claimants since I can remember (vintage 1962).

Yes there were some good 'benefit harvest' years in the early 2000s, but those days are now long gone. It really isn't the 'lifestyle' choice that many are led to believe it is.

Hard to fathom for those that live elsewhere but there really is vast swathes of the UK where very few job opportunities exist.

Hence the existence of a Levelling-Up Agenda, ineffective though it is. There are some areas of the UK where you have to have very serious issues to be unable to find work, and in the very same places some very mediocre workers gain some great job titles and pay to go with it.

Then the other side of the coin, some very great and capable workers have no job to go to.

But this isn’t about how easy or otherwise it is to find work. It’s about forcing very sick and disabled people to find work or lose benefit. With no regard to whether suitable employment exists, or the likely effect on their health. It’s about knowing that these people are vulnerable and unable to work, and not caring. The government can’t change the fact of the illness or the disability, so they change the eligibility conditions and redefine what sick and disabled means. Suddenly hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people no longer qualify. They did it with the transition from disability living allowance to personal independence payment. They decided that too many people were claiming DLA, so introduced PIP as a replacement benefit and changed the eligibility conditions so that it was much harder to get. Overnight hundreds of thousands of people became ineligible - not because they were no longer disabled, but because they were no longer disabled ‘enough’. That’ how it works.

but, but, but - is it about forcing disabled people into work they are incapable of doing? There's plenty of disabled people who say give me a chance to work and I will if I can.

I know my autistic ds is doing his best to get a job from the mostly non-existent jobs available. As am I, his 60+ carer, old and toothless amongst the many younger (50s or less) more good-looking applicants for the few jobs available.

And I still got a student loan to repay, mortgage and 6 years til my pension.

Feel like Yosser Hughes - "gissa job".

Yes. It is. That’s exactly what it’s about. The mechanisms already exist for those claimants who are assessed as too sick/disabled to work, to engage with the system and look for work if that’s what they want to do. But Government simply don’t believe that there are as many people too sick to work as have been assessed as such. So in actual fact they don’t trust the very system of assessment they designed and introduced themselves. Do you not think that’s a damning indictment ?

None of this is about obliging employers to take on disabled workers. That would be in the "Too Hard" file.

Tossers.

That’s spot on. The idea is to introduce conditionality and sanctions on vulnerable people the governments’ own system has already identified as too sick to work. There’s no onus on employers to take on these people and no guarantee that all these magical problem solving WFH vacancies will materialise. So when it all goes tits up, who will get the blame ? Why the lazy, workshy disabled people who are refusing to engage with the system of course. Stop their benefit until they comply. Maybe a few of them will do us a favour and die along the way - that’ll save a few quid. It’s depressing and there has to be a better way for a country like the UK to treat its most sick and disabled in the 21st century.

I had my eyes seriously opened c.1980 when I lived a year in Sunderland after living in SE England. It was like living in a different country, as I had previously done. The NE was a different world to the SE.

These differences still exist. Moving is not a solution, the SE is overpopulated already....

Just move a great ton of jobs towards all the edges, cos the UK ain't some big geographical flat mass to shift things around on.

If we don't have the jobs here then we gotta move, just like my dad and uncles did after they fought and lived through ww2 and Korea, fucked off with how it turned out.

So, maybe I'm the remnants of the trash left behind, certainly feels like it,

I wish they had increased inheritance tax. Inheritance is a privilege to only the wealthy, it’s additional money that is not somebody’s ‘living’. I would not object to paying higher taxes on inheritance, especially if the funds could be directed at the NHS

I agree about inheritance tax - my sisters were so against it. DM was only a teacher/DH for a few years, and my sis's in health and the civil service - the 'wealth' came solely from DM's property value increase.

Yet neither of my sisters could equate their salaries with taxation; nor our DM's wealth with unearned income - dear fucking god i thought, what the fuck else pays your wages - mum the teacher, sister 1 the nurse and sister 2 the civil servant other than taxes.

Taxes are not hypothecated, though politicians like to hint that they are to gull the voters.

Just because they aren’t at the moment doesn’t mean to say they can’t be in the future. Regardless, the government obviously needs more money and inheritance tax is a lot more palatable than increased taxes on people’s monthly income. Most inheritance is created by inflated property prices, so not ‘earned’ money.

Agree re both, no, people should not be allowed to claim benefits they are not entitled to, and have seen many threads here about whether people should report such cases, so yes it does happen and many of us have known of people doing it. If you're not doing anything wrong then what's wrong with checks? Of course companies should be made to pay taxes too, but they have teams of lawyers and accountants doing this for them, which would require a great deal of time and money to investigate.