Benefit fraud - the levels are very low

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Repost: Benefit fraud - the levels are very low

Earlier this year, we published this blog from Richard Exell which looked at the very low levels of benefit fraud.

We're reposting it today as an alternate view on campaigns against benefits that are running in various newspapers at the moment. The figures show that benefit fraud levels are actually very small.

At the end of Richard's post, there's also an extract and video from a post on disability hate crime that we ran in June, in which people with disabilities talk about their experiences of the repercussions of benefit fraud media campaigns. Their feeling was that these campaigns were directly influencing the way people on benefits were being perceived and that people with disabiltiies were being associated with benefit cheating.

From Richard Exell's original post:

"This DWP report on Fraud and Error in the Benefit System really ought to get more coverage.

With this publication we now have figures for the whole of the financial year 2010/11.

They show: 0.8% of benefit spending is overpaid due to fraud, amounting to £1.2 billion, and that this proportion is the same as in 2009/10.

If we look at the estimates for different benefits, they are:

Retirement Pension 0.0%;

Incapacity Benefit 0.3%;

Disability Living Allowance 0.5%;

Council Tax Benefit 1.3%;

Housing Benefit 1.4%;

Pension Credit 1.6%;

Income Support 2.8%;

Jobseeker?s Allowance 3.4%;

Carer?s Allowance 3.9%.

Look at the figures for disability benefits and see how low the figures are. Remember them next time the BBC is running one of its 30 minute hate programmes, pushing the idea that every disabled person on benefits is a fraudster."

There is an updated statistics document from the DWP here.

falseeconomy.org.uk/blog/repost-benefit-fraud-the-levels-are-very-low

Well for me the issue isn't fraud although it is worth pointing out that fraud by it's very definition is hard to quantify. Successful fraudsters are getting away with it so won't appear in the figures anyway.

The issue is that as a nation we're running a huge deficit so cannot afford to pay for everything we're currently paying for. So we either must earn more (unlikely in the current economic climate) or cuts must be made. Since welfare spending is our largest area, it is inevitable cuts must be made here.

I'm sure now you'll tell me I'm wrong and that the solution is to keep borrowing to pay for all these worthwhile benefits. But to me that's just like a heroin addict telling me he doesn't have a problem and it's everyone else who is wrong.

niceguy-

Well for me the issue isn't fraud although it is worth pointing out that fraud by it's very definition is hard to quantify. Successful fraudsters are getting away with it so won't appear in the figures anyway.

Well, the DWP also estimates that an almost equal amount of benefits are unclaimed. So the net figure is really very small.

The issue is that as a nation we're running a huge deficit so cannot afford to pay for everything we're currently paying for. So we either must earn more (unlikely in the current economic climate) or cuts must be made. Since welfare spending is our largest area, it is inevitable cuts must be made here.

We're running a huge deficit because we're in the middle of a recession, not because our spending is that high. I've explained this a million times before. In the middle of a recession, govt. tax receipts plummet, which is results in a deficit if spending remains the same.

You won't be able to balance an 11% deficit by spending cuts. You'll end up like Zimbabwe. Furthermore, the spending cuts are actually harming the chances of recovery, contributing to a vicious cycle.

Secondly, tens, if not hundreds, of billions of pounds are potentially recoverable by going after unpaid taxes. Instead of attacking welfare for single mothers and for paying for hospitals, you should be going after the lost tax. Not only would this be a more moral thing to do, but it would also have the added benefit of not contributing to the even greater fuckup of the economy.

I'm sure now you'll tell me I'm wrong and that the solution is to keep borrowing to pay for all these worthwhile benefits. But to me that's just like a heroin addict telling me he doesn't have a problem and it's everyone else who is wrong.

We're not addicted to borrowing. As I've shown 1,000,000 times before, both our debt levels and interest payments on debt are at historically low levels:

www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/debt_brief.php

But you continue to ignore this because you're somehow mentally stuck, or obsessed, with the idea that the UK has spent too much on it's 'credit card'. You find this narrative comforting, for some reason, and no amount of facts, reasoning, or logic will sway you otherwise.

We're running a huge deficit because we're in the middle of a recession,

And as you well know we were running deficits during the boom times as well. If like some countries we had a healthy surplus during the good times then I'd be more inclined to agree with you. In the last thirty years we've managed about 3-4 years of running a balanced budget.

But when you are borrowing money during the good times and bad times then that's a sign that something fundamental must be done.

I do agree that cuts are harming our recovery in the short term but no cuts would harm us more in the long term.

If the Government were to spend the money wisely, there wouldn't be a huge deficit. The money loaned to the banks were not used as requested; loans to small businesses. Investments are being made in infrastructure and knocking 10 minutes off a train journey to London. Bankers are still being rewarded for screwing up the economy while families have their benefits cut whilst we all live under the threat of redundancy. Jobs can be kept safe and created if the banks start to lend to small businesses. Simples.

Semantics, that's all.

"You deserve it./you're entitled to it" might not be legally fraudulent, but it doesn't make it ok.

I don't understand how their can be a statistic for something that they cannot know the exact amount of

Surely if they knew exactly how much benefit fraud was happening, none would be happening.

Just doesn't make sense.

if benefit fraud is so rare, and often motivated by claimants inability to improve their situation through work..

one wonders why the previous government ran so many expensive (and witch-hunt like) advertising campaigns to get people to dob in benefit fraudsters?

Do not believe those stats at all. I know of (anecdote I know but still true) at least 8 women who claim housing benefit/income support by claiming to be one parent families. All of them receive cash in hand from partners and some partners live with them. The system is abused, probably less so for state age pension.

one wonders why the previous government ran so many expensive (and witch-hunt like) advertising campaigns to get people to dob in benefit fraudsters?
because it removes focus from tax dodgers and government corruption?

ads like

yet more public money pissed up the wall to no good end.

if the Condems ran an ad campaign like this you'd be the first to criticise.

The stats are a waste of time, as sucessful criminals are still yet to be caught.
Someone good at decieving the benefits system are still getting away with it as their friends, neighbours and family are none the wiser!
I have a friend who is claiming as a simgle person although she lives with her partner who works full-time, but i would never report her as it will be her children that suffer if they were sent to prison. Not only that, but she is in so much debt that even with her benefits and his money coming in they go short so much so she cannot afford a good meal most days.
Personally i would never risk it, ever as it isn't worth losing your kids over if you end up with a custodial sentence, but i see why people end up in the situation.

There really aren't hundreds of billions of pounds of unpaid tax out there. HMRC - the organisation best positioned to estimate - thinks they're £35bn of unpaid taxes. Around £20bn of evasion, almost exclusively by small traders. And around £15bn of avoidance from across the spectrum of taxpayers. The avoidance isn't illegal and so us very difficult to stop - it can only be stopped if HMRC take the relevant taxpayers to court AND the courts agree that the taxpayers' interpretation of often opaque law is incorrect. Sometimes it turns out that the taxpayers were interpretting the law more correctly than HMRC, as in the case of Vodafone.

I agree that the cuts are too deep. I do believe that they are unfair to individuals AND are damaging the recovery.

I also agree with Niceguy that we were spending too much as evidenced by the fact that we have a structural as well as a cyclical deficit.

If there were easy answers we'd already be implementing them. Sadly, there aren't.

In any case, I agree benefit fraud is much lower than generally assumed.

In my view the sats are wrong

If your able to work and are not doing so in my view that is fraud not in their eyes but in my and their are whole familes who are not in work

The left. Would have us belive their are really three genrations for 10 years or more for whom none could find work

i have lived here for 7 years their is a family across the road mum and dad four boys and now a girlfriend with a baby on the way which non have never had a job since i moved in i am not buying that in 7 years not one out of the 6 now 7 could find a job

If your able to work and are not doing so in my view that is fraud

The problem is that everyone's definition of what a valid claim is, is different.

For example, if someone is in a wheelchair, they are clearly disabled. Does that mean they cannot work and should be given benefits?

If someone is blind, should they be excused from work?

A missing arm perhaps?

Back problems? This one is a nightmare to determine who has it too bad to work and whom is maybe stretching the truth.

The upshot is that very few claimants would admit their claim is not genuine and in fact they can and should work. Most will agree that the rules need to be tightened up and I'm sure we all know people who claim but we think are undeserving. However, everyone thinks the line should be drawn elsewhere.

Fraud is about the only part where we can all agree is wrong so the government find it easy to push that without too many critics. It really doesn't help us all that much though.

"If someone is blind, should they be excused from work?"

The BBC's Peter White and Archers actor Ryan Kelly would have something to say about that, I expect.

Blunkett is unlikely to have agreed.

Douglas Bader won us the war you know, and Nelson was handy in a dust up too!

Then there's the whole Paralympic bunch.... ruining for everyone by recklessly sprinting about....

Ah well that didnt take long did it. The Paralympics havent even started yet and theres already the attitude "Well the Paralympians can do it (compete in the Paralympic Games so why cant other disabled people do what they do.
Soooo The Olympians can do it (compete in the Olympics) so why cant other able bodied people do what they do.
Just applying the same principle thats all.

Carer, I think Cogito was being facetious.

Is it time to remind niceguy THAT DLA IS NOT AN OUT OF WORK BENEFIT?

My DP gets DLA he works, always has.

Funnily enough, the three people I can think of immediately who claim DLA I know through...erm, my/our workplace. Yes, agreed; it is NOT an out of work benefit.

Yes I agree that DLA is not an out of work benefit. My overall point is that as a society we need to take a long hard look at whom our benefits are currently supporting and ask ourselves if this is the best use of our very limited money.

And I'm not just talking about those who are ill/disabled. I'm talking about all benefits. Unemployed, those on income support, pensioners. We need to look at the entire system. If we are serious about tackling the deficit, tinkering around the edges won't do it.

niceguy are you suggesting my DS deafbliind since birth is able to work? Please show a bit of compassion

Wow a benefit bashing thread on MN...surely not...my eyes must be betraying me!

Anyone for benefit bashing bingo?