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.

This ^^

The only bank accounts they are checking is those of UC recipients. Working age, means tested, benefits or top ups.

PIP/DLA alone are not affected by wealth or bank balances.

https://www.gbnews.com/money/universal-credit-bank-account-check

It's simple. The Conservatives don't like benefit claimants. They only like pensioners, who are also benefit claimants, because they overwhelmingly vote Conservative. They are not interested in being fair. They would like some tax cuts.

It's really not difficult, there's just no will from the political elite to upset their future employers.

The Americans, for example, have made it that you pay American taxes no matter where you live in the world, unless you renounce your American citizenship. Even if you do that they've made it so that you have to pay tax for a certain period after and potentially sell off assets.

This is the problem

No I don't know anyone claiming benefits when they shouldn't.

Pip is not easy to get at all. It requires a lot of stress, an assessment, drs backing up when the claimant says, often reconsideration and tribunals.

You are just assuming from the outside that they could work and are assuming they are not entitled to it but are some how claiming anyway.

This kind of opinion makes the lives of disabled people significantly worse.

This.
And in particular it’s high time there was compulsory registration of all rental properties, so that landlords cannot get away with failing to declare their rental income. As it stands, in many areas, if you have no mortgage (and a good many don’t) there is nobody you are obliged to tell that you are renting out a property. The self-assessment tax form asks only how many properties, no addresses - surely the easiest thing to fiddle.

I’m quite sure it’s rife. A doctor friend of a dd who moved area and rented out her original flat, was openly told by a married couple of fellow senior doctors that she was mad to be declaring her rental income - ‘We never have!’ And that’s not all I’ve ever heard.

As for the slumlords who cram tenants in to neglected properties and very
likely demand the rent in cash, it doesn’t take a genius to work that one out.

The banks are to be made responsible for checking all accounts into which means tested (income based) benefits are being paid by BACS, and alerting DWP to any irregularity. It isn’t true to say that all benefits claimants will be subject to these checks - it’s mainly for those on means tested benefits, to check that all income has been declared and that savings thresholds are not being exceeded. Disability benefits like PIP, DLA and AA aren’t affected where they are stand alone benefits because they are not means tested.

Where problems will arise is where the banks see other payments such as relatives making payments maybe for birthday/Christmas gifts or to repay money owed, because strictly speaking anything you receive has to be declared, but many claimants don’t think things like this count. I think DWP are going to waste a lot of time chasing up things like this alongside the deliberate fraud it’s intended to address.

I imagine some posters like to think or to pretend that PIP claims are easy, @Universalsnail, for (shall we say) interesting psychological reasons.

I would like to know how & why they are going to 'monitor' the bank accounts of DLA or PIP claimants when such claims are not income dependent.

This is just the Tories desperately trying to appeal to the Daily Mail mob thinking it can win them a few votes.

I think it horrific that there is a real dehumanisation of people who happen to claim benefits. It is like they stop being people with a right to privacy and instead are just all viewed by default as fraudsters and lazy.

It seems to me that these days most criminals and people who milk the system are those in Parliament, the House of Lords , the government in general and their rich mates...

The idea of snooping into people's bank accounts simply because they claim benefits should be challenged in court.

And yes big companies and wealthy individual are getting away with not paying their taxes and people like Michelle Mone need to be arrested and put in front of a jury and stripped of her title.

Also, I have absolutely no confidence in people's private data being kept safe with this current government.

This is all going to be done by AI which will just turn off the payments if they find irregularities. No human involvement and the claimant will have to appeal to the DWP. That will take time, and of course save money immediately while the claimant has to make a case against the AI decision. It will be very hard to do.

@Rosscameasdoody Of course its a benefit its been a benefit since the National Insurance Act of 1946 but its a contribution based one as when we were working age we paid for the pensioner generations before us.

My late BIL worked for what was the DSS in the fraud department. He always said the “clamp down on cheats” campaigns were purely political rhetoric and that the Mrs Snooks claiming a bit extra amounted to very little. The real, proper, high value frauds were committed by organised crime and I guess it’s the same today. He wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination a bleeding heart liberal and definitely knew what he was talking about.

So how would you feel if it was extended to all UK bank accounts to monitor fo tax fraud. And it’s really not a small amount of privacy that’s being invaded, it’s just another rung on the ladder of total control. If they can justify monitoring peoples’ bank accounts as a crackdown on benefit fraud, just imagine the other creative justifications in store for the future.

This is v worrying, could lead to all sorts being done with that data esp if combined with other data as a pp said.

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.

@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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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).

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

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’.