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.

On the face of it, if the PIP or DLA claimant isn’t claiming any other means tested working age benefits then they wouldn’t be affected. But at some point they’re going to be monitored if plans to collect information on how benefit is spent go ahead. Easy to see why - monitoring how much of your disability benefits are being spent on disability related things.

How will that make a difference ? Do you think a Labour government is going to scrap the legislation needed to put this into operation when it’s already underway ? AI will be just as beneficial to a Labour government as any other. Labour have often run with Tory based ideas, and vice versa.

The UC checks and balances are only part of the picture. New legislation is being prepared with a view to monitoring the bank accounts of all benefit claimants.

They are not mutually exclusive though. DWP can (and should) work to reduce fraud in their systems and HMRC should equally pursue investigations into potential fraudulent accounts.

I had to go through a lot of inhumane assessments and meetings to claim the benefits I claim. I still don’t have any of the support I actually need, but I do have money enough to feed the kids. I am ashamed of being on benefits, but I’m not capable of work right now. I already feel subhuman, this just makes me feel even worse. What is the point of attempting to survive when this is what the government and society think of me. I’m better off dead going by so many of these comments.

This is public money. It is much cheaper and more effective to do this than pay civil servants in each department to do what AI can and less effectively

It will certainly catch people out, yes. The moral is, get your birthday/Christmas money in cash and spend it as cash.

According to the lovely Suella Braverman being homeless and living in a tent is a lifestyle choice too. Michelle Mone isn’t the only soulless twat - most of them are in government.

Please don't imagine all the frankly stupid comments from people who have not thought this through and obviously never had to negotiate the insane world of DWP are the whole picture.

Plenty of us can see this for what it really is and are opposed to it for that reason.

but surely unless grandparents are transferring thousands it won’t matter. you need over 16000 in your account before you are no longer eligible for UC (i think)

If you claim means tested/income based benefits you have to declare everything - it’s not the savings threshold in question here, it’s what’s seen and treated as income.

It makes no sense to me to be monitoring the accounts of people on disability benefits. I get PIP and new style ESA which is contributions-based, and none of it is means-tested. We have a high household income as DH is a high earner. We have amounts well over the £16k limit in our joint account at any time.

How are they to know whether the luxury goods and treats I buy are paid for from my disability benefits or DH's wage? And all they will see is the name of the retailer, so the things I buy from Amazon or John Lewis could be expensive bags and jewellery, or a useful labour-saving device

Hey, please don't think that. Threads like this on MN attract nutters and make for depressing reading. None of this may ever happen and you are doing a fantastic job bringing up your DC.

Step away from threads like these, is my advice. And there will will be plenty of people and legal & disability charities challenging this nonsense.

Take care and thank you for everything that you're doing in raising your family under harsh circumstances I've been there, a long time ago; and it was hard for a while, I'm not going to lie. I'm on your side.

I'm also intrigued as to how far all this will go.

Say a payment to Asda on a card is £98. Is that OK, in and of itself - or will DWP want to check it hasn't been spent on alcohol and cake - will it want a specific break-down of items from Asda or the claimant for a particular transaction/date?

If they really want to chase the bad guys, they to need to be chasing the cash economy and money laundering, which tbh is a very male world (tradies working cash-in-hand, shops with remarkably few customers etc), and not penalise women trying to bring up children and putting them at risk of homelessness through frozen rent benefit. Who is going to house these families?

One of the reasons always given for how crap this country is at collecting Child Support is because DWP and HMRC and other systems can't talk to each other. But now they suddenly can??

Think about it.
More tax paid by the more wealthy.
More money in the government's coffers.
How would that make running the country more expensive for 'normal people'?

If the government wanted to spend a billion on schools, or the health service, they would. But wealthy people and government figures use private schools and private healthcare, so they are not motivated to help subsidise the state. There's literally no motivation for them to deal with tax evasion by the wealthy. But there is a motivation to demonise the poor, so those one step up the ladder can say oh look at how hard the government is working to stop (insert: benefit scroungers, boat people, hate marchers etc) and vote for them again. It's so shit. It's all lip service and self-interest.

DWP will be monitoring ALL bank accounts before long.
Anyone who claims any benefit, whether income related or not, will be subject to this intense scrutiny.

They already know exactly where and when, and more importantly, what was purchased.
They can already tell if you went thrugh a self service till, a main till, or if you went through a drive thru.
With this new legislation coming into play this year, your own bank account has now turned spy for them.

Every transaction has a unique code. If you spend £40 in Sainsburys, they can recover the receipt for that exact purchase years later if needs be.
They will know if you have purchased some immodiums, clean underwear and barrier creams. They will also know if you picked up some alcohol and chocolates.

If you claim PIP for severe anxiety, telling the DWP you hardly leave the house, then be prepared for your payments to be automatically stopped once the AI detects payments to restaurants, cafes, shops on a regular basis. Basically anything that flags up as not consistent with your reported condition.

If you claim for physical health problems, for example you tell them you cannot prepare a simple meal on most days, then be aware the AI will be able to tell how often you are buying ready meals/fast food/takeaway deliveries.
If you pop to Morrisons and buy a jar of sauce, some vegetables and a bag of rice, this will flag. Do this too often and you will be pulled in for further questioning.

Claiming you cannot use public transport? Don't use your card or Apple Pay on a bud then. Or the underground.

Claiming on the basis you need help managing your own finances?
Unless you are constantly dipping into the overdraft, direct debits being bounced etc, this will potentially flag you up.

Disability related costs can also be checked, they know exactly what you bought in the Co Op and in Boots. If this is extra washing powders and new underwear then fine. If not, be prepared for further scrutiny.

You cannot just say to them, oh yes that £20 in Tesco was for x/y/z.
They already know, and if they want to get a transaction receipt, the retailer is legally obliged to provide it.

Claiming for a condition that you say requires use of more water or energy? The AI will be able to cross referenxe with your utility bills. Any discrepencies and they may question your claim.

AI has no limits. Pictures can be built up very quickly and WILL be used against everybody in the future. And not for our benefit either.

There are so many other examples. I remember reading about someone on a Facebook advice page not that long ago, apparently she claimed DLA for her child, she was stitched up by a jealous relative. The DWP managed to get her bank statements without her knowing!! and asked why she was paying for disney+ and Roblox if the child struggles to concentrate for more than a few minutes at any one time! Were they for the child, can the child actually watch a disney movie then? Can they sit and play on Roblox without being distracted? Nothing more came of it, but the very fact that they saw fit to obtain bank statements and scrutinise the transactions to try and somehow disprove the claim is terrifying.
Be prepared to see a lot more of this in the future.

I predict major changes are coming in the welfare system. I think you will have to justify every penny and provide expenses BEFORE getting paid a disability allowance, a bit like the current shambles that is the UC childcare system. I think the set amount for different levels of care will be scrapped and instead you will have to justify every single penny.

Cash is and always will be king. But unfortunately we as a society have willingly adopted all this modern technology with no questions asked.
Everything the government brings in is for THEIR benefit, not of the people.

Anyone who claims benefits should be very worried with these proposed changes that will certainly be implemented in the very near future. Life is about to get much, much harder for the innocent disabled and all genuine claimants.
I think they will save a lot of money as genuine disabled people will just be too terrified to claim, or even pop to a restaurant on a good day if they feel up to it.

This sort of scaremongering speculation is maybe not the most helpful to already anxious people.

Especially if based on Facebook posts.

@LNY1986 - you have it exactly right. The days of persuading one human being are over. The day about your spending used in evidence have come.

I was a lawyer once. This sort of evidence and its granularity would have been a dream because it would make it easy to defeat broad claims about why people did or did not do. That's why AI is here to stay.

One of the new powers being considered is collecting information about where and how benefit claimants spend their money.

@Rosscameasdoody , when you when you say one of the powers they are considering is collecting information about where and how benefit claimants spend their money, this isn’t planned immediately at the end of the year is it like the monthly monitoring of bank accounts which they plan to bring in at the end of the year? Thank you.

Yes surely it will be viewed as more income in that assessment period and of that claimant is someone who cannot work they will assume it’s undeclared earnings and will they accept it was a gift

Well I probably look like a spring lamb and entirely suspicious on PIP, as my carers take my bank card to shop for me. The PIP assessor I had last time round was obviously interested in this, asked some questions, made notes and awarded me points on it.

What I'm interested in is if a disabled person, having had their benefit frozen by the government for no rational reason, would have any recourse? It's the freezing, not necessarily the 'quick look' that I object to. I might be able to survive without PIP for a year ... but how many would suffer real detriment? Most, I'd have thought. Where's the Equality Impact Assessment? The plans for rehousing people who are evicted?

They won’t know which income source is used, I agree, but even contribution based benefits can be claimed fraudulently - a new style ESA claim would be fraudulent if the recipient was working as well, for example. And although a disability benefit like PIP is non means tested, tax free and is paid regardless of the ability to work, it’s a cost based benefit, so if the intention is to introduce technology to track what recipients spend their money on, it’s not hard to see that it could be used to reduce benefits for those deemed not to be spending their PIP or whatever, in line with those extra costs brought about by disability.

I doubt you would have much recourse. If benefit was stopped by the AI algorithm you would have to appeal direct to DWP and co-operate with any investigation.

Remains to be seen doesn’t it ? I think they would have to accept it was a give if it could be proven as such, but it’s the stopping of benefit and the ensuing investigation that will be the problem, given the amount of time the claimant could potentially be without benefit.

The cost based thing with PIP is interesting because atm you need to show that you need help/adaptions/support, but you don’t necessarily need to be getting them.

if there’s going to be a monitoring of spending it’s going to be interesting to see how far they take that, and if there’s going to end up being ‘acceptable’ spending judgements made.