PIP Fraud- now even the DWP staff themselves are it!

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Clifford Redman, 57, claimed he had severe mobility issues and needed daily help - but he was caught out after being filmed going to the gym and on long walks https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2105390/dwp-fraudster-claimed-19k-caught-gym

Tip of the iceberg, serious reform needed.

Really ?
I find it hard to beleive that GPs openly admit to lying about a patient, did you not report them?
If not why not?
Also a GP letter isn't great evidence .

I've never known a GP to openly lie either. Especially as with most conditions there'd be test results

The lady who did my pip assessment did accuse my GP and consultant of lying. Neither have any reason to lie. My GPs letter was based on various hospital reports going back to the 90s (his letter was based on test results which he has access to) and my consultant report was based on hospital tests and reported symptoms

That’s not quite the same as a fraudulent letter. A GP is unlikely to know the exact ‘level’ of somebody’s anxiety for example. But they will know whether they are anxious or not and whether they need a referral to a psychiatrist or not.

Incidentalky, the DWP only takes anxiety seriously if you have seen by a psychiatrist or other specialist or acutely mental health practitioner. If you have only been treated by a GP or counsellor, they don’t take much notice.

The two levels still don't accurately reflect the extra costs required or not required.

People do mostly choose to have children however not everyone chooses to become a parent in the circumstances that I described.

PIP (the artist formerly known as DLA) is often really a token payment anyway - there are some aids adaptations and appliances that far exceed it.

No but if the disabled person is also eligible for UC the two ( three for DLA) has an affect on the level of disability element on UC.

That's only for children. The only disability payment for adults is LCWRA.

Also you can only get a mobility car with HRM, yes I know many people need to put a deposit down ( although we are lucky we are on mobility car number two and neither have needed a deposit.).

My DS' wheelchair was £3.5k. This isn't unusual.

So one assessor has got away with a fraudulent claim, and that means everybody is "at it". Farage was fraudulently claiming expenses from the European Parliament, does that mean that all politicians are fraudulent?

You must know a motley bunch of people.

I couldn't tell you much at all about my friends and aquaintances' finances.

I don't even know what some of my friends do for a living let alone their finances

I'm sure there are.. i would love it right now... but i don't have the time, because between my own disability, and raising 2 disabled kids, and having to have email marathons, and phonecalls with 2 colleges to support them, i'm fucking knackered and couldn't make it to the hairdressers today and had to cancel my appointment.

Thing is, i'm not so fucking dumb as to not understand the difference between parenting exhausted, and disabled and caring for disabled teens exhausted.

But hey ho.. i'd LOVE to swap with someone who's normal parenting exhausted.. i might actually have made it to my appointment rather than being stuck on the sofa, too absolutely bone tired and emotionally void to do anything else today but breathe..

After reading so many posts on here about people's debilitating conditions I think it's unfair to focus on the 1% that's fraud. Like the news won't report how in 99% of the time people's PIP helps them with their life and combat the struggles of being disabled

I’m not sure that anyone actually read the link the OP posted. This guy initially made a legitimate claim. Not fraudulent. His crime was that he did not report change. Not change in his diagnosis but change in impact on daily living and mobility.

But it is hard to work out when change in daily living or mobility should be reported. Especially when change results from temporary intervention like a gym prescription which you can only afford in the long term if you fund it via PIP. Take away the PIP, you take away ability to fund the intervention and the impact on daily living returns. This can apply to both physical and mental health. Change means that tasks can be performed reliably within a reasonable time more than 50% of the time. But if you can only achieve that some of the time or only with PIP funding your claim is not fraudulent. So before reporting a change that may lead to reduction or loss of benefit you need to be confident that it is not a blip and will remain if PIP is reduced or stopped. If it turns out it wasn’t sustained you are back to square one.

You can’t just report a change that your condition has worsened and have PIP reinstated without being reassessed.

You also need someone to drive the car.

A lot of aids and adaptations have to be custom made (because regardless of what any fucker on this thread may dare to punt, disability is very much a minority pursuit). So that makes them eye wateringly expensive.

Also peoples conditions can rapidly mean a change in requirements. It is entirely possible someone might have to buy a £3,500 wheelchair every year. Particularly if they are growing.

Still I am sure some ignorant twat will breeze on past this truth bomb to regale is will tales of entire planeloads of "people I know" who have had their toilets gold plated and their homes warmed with fistfuls of fivers.

But this is part of what makes this system so thoroughly unfit for purpose, surely? The woman using PIP money to get her nails done clearly gets too much or money she doesn’t need, the person getting a trifling amount compared to the cost of the wheelchair they need is getting too little. Bin it and start again.

Do you? How many? What percentage of claimants? Where do you get your figures? Or are you just quoting the Daily Mail? How do the figures compare with tax fraud?

The cost of a bespoke system would dwarf the amount it pays out.

I think the one thing that would receive no argument from anyone of any persuasion on this debate is that the system was never fit for purpose, if the purpose was to support the disabled.

Only if it's run by fuckers like Fujitsu who can't even make 2+2=4.

What would you do though? It is based on care needs, not diagnosis because people with the same diagnosis may very well have different needs such as one person may need the £3k wheelchair but the next person may be fine with a cheaper wheelchair for whatever reason.

Lets also not forget that scrapping PIP/DLA and coming up with a new system would also cost a lot of money, as would trying to police how people spend their disability money.

This is what I find frustrating. I have hemiplegia cerebral palsy, have never claimed disability benefits (highly suspect I would be turned down, as I have very few limitations on daily living etc) BUT it seems that HRM and motorbility is the only way to get halfway affordable car adaptations. I spent 7 years trying to learn to drive in automatics with steering balls, failed 7 tests. I do wonder whether having better adaptations may have helped me, but I could never have afforded them myself. Panels on the steering wheel with things like indicators and headlight controls can run into £thousands. Whilst many cars nowadays have vital(!) things like radio volume control on the steering wheel as standard 🙄