Help me think through this - Benefit fraud as a feminist issue

[Bluthbanana]

As per the title, really.

I was reading my local paper, and there was a story about a woman being found guilty of benefit fraud for claiming ESA on the basis of her husband being out of work, when he wasn't. Obviously, yes fraud was committed and it shouldn't be let go lightly. But I felt a bit uneasy at how there was no implications for the husband involved. Surely it was on both of them to commit that fraud? Benefit payments in a family mostly go to the woman, as it's most likely the woman who claims the child benefit and all payments go to the same account, but surely the husband would have had to have provided his own declaration of his work situation?

And then the more I thought about it, the more I realised that it's actually very, very rarely that I see reports of men being found guilty/being tried for benefit fraud in our local courts. It's almost entirely women.

Am I being hyper sensitive to this or is this A Thing?

I have heard of women in abusive relationships where the husband has forced her to claim.

It's loaded.
Women tend to be the majority of single parents who are expected to move their entire financial responsibility to every new relationship.
Always helped with malicious fraud reports.

I wonder if it's because women more often get caught in a trap especially if they are a lone parent. They get benefits but then start a relationship and don't realise that that may impact their claim. They aren't sure of the new relationship or it isn't stable, so even though there's perhaps more money coming in, they don't dare change their status, then someone dobs them in, or they get investigated and it spirals out of control. Maybe they can't afford to take the risk of changing their status and losing money that may take ages to claim back should the new relationship not work out, leaving them at risk of rent arrears etc.
Maybe fewer men get into trouble because fewer of them are entirely reliant on benefits?

Steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king.
MPs effectively stealing huge amounts in expenses are treated very differently to women who most of the time are trying to feed and clothe their kids.
And we have just paid 2.4m of public money to refurbish Prince Harry’s house when there are many mums who have to go to food banks.

Yes, benefit fraud is definitely a feminist issue.

I agree.

Financial abuse is a huge driver of benefit fraud.

Take the money and take the responsibility. It cannot realistically be done any other way.

Ehh?!

ESA is employment and support allowance. You cant claim it on behalf of someone else.

If it was universal credit on the vasis that he wasnt working presumably she put the claim in for both. Her claim her responsibility

Thats not to say benefits fraud isnt a feminist issue but i dont think this is the case to base the good fight on

The majority of fraudulent benefit claims which affect women will be those where the woman claims as a single parent but is in a relationship & cohabiting with a working man.

In those cases it is the woman who is "claiming" the benefit so legally she is committing the crime of benefit fraud. She gets a massive overpayment to pay back thereby reducing her future benefits & he skips off onto the sunset with his salary intact.

The law should definitely extend to take account of the fact that whilst the man is not claiming the benefit he is benefitting from the claim due to things such as illegally living in a property for which housing benefit is paid meaning he isn't paying rent.

Volcanion This is just a case that appeared in the local press this week. linked

Take the money and take the responsibility Yes, but in a joint claim should there not be joint responsibility, as the govt assumes that the money goes to household budget rather than the individual?

OH went to prison for benefit fraud on a joint application with his ex wife. She was not charged at all. They made an example of him, it was expected he would not get a prison sentence so a big surprise for everyone when he did go.

The reason it was him and not her was they were given a choice of who would take the fall- and they decided he would so she would stay with the kids. There were no charges brought for her at all. Maybe that's what has happened in most of the cases that the women have been charged in?

Sorry if I’m being dense why does having a boyfriend if you are a single parent affect your benefits?

I'd say it's a feminist issue insofar as women are punished for very slight crimes connected to trying to feed their children. I think making sure mothers have enough money to look after their kids is a societal issue. ( I know many childfree people disagree with me and say society shouldn't fund the choice to have children)

Whereas men are let off for terrible crimes.

@Dervel the DWP see having a boyfriend stay over regularly as tantamount to living together, As in two salaries now coming in to a house so benefits should no longer be paid.
I was recently reported as committing benefit fraud for having my boyfriend stay over despite him in no way financially contributing to my household.
So I'm now faced with the choice of moving him in or curtailing his visits to two nights per week.

Very much a feminist issue in my opinion.

Dervel if you are classed as living with someone (which can be if that person stays at your house several nights a week) your benefits are reduced. Were you not aware of that?

Most of the fraud cases I see in my local paper are women, and it's not all benefit fraud, much of it is defrauding employers.
It's easy to say it's due to financial pressure on women, but then is it the financial pressure on men which excuses theft or dealing drugs (mostly male crimes)?

@Dervel because there's a lot of confusion around when does he become financially responsible for you (& your children) as opposed to the state.

There are no definite set of circumstances which trigger that. So in some cases if he stays over 2 nights a week when the kids are with the other parent, keeps a set of clothes in a drawer & a toothbrush in the bathroom and pays for one day out with you & the kids a month the DWP can class that as a relationship & decide you are no longer eligible for benefits as he's contributing to the household so his income should be taken into account for your benefits.

You can claim ESA as a couple if your partner works less than 24 hours a week - well, you can't any more because you have to claim UC instead. The way DWP will view this case is that the woman signed the forms therefore it's her that entered into the agreement and is therefore liable.

Financial abuse is possible in this case, I'm not saying it has happened here but, for example, he could have coerced her into claiming, knowing it was not him taking the risk, or he could have hidden details of his employment and told her he was not working, or he could have deprived the family of any money from his earnings so she was driven to desperate measures.

Universal credit expands the possibilities for financial abuse because as a default it's paid as one big lump sum into a single account and if you're in a couple you have to make a joint claim. If you're in an abusive relationship you can request that the payment is split between two accounts but even making that request can be too dangerous for lots of women. It enables men to have complete control over the household money in ways the old benefit system never did.

The whole question of what counts as living with someone is difficult I think. I understand why they approach it the way they do, and it's not only the government - I had a landlord tell my roommate that if her boyfriend was going to keep staying so much he had to pay rent. And TBH the rest of us were relieved because it did seem like he was living there pretty much for free.
And making a financial contribution, or another residence, factors also have problems.

I think a lot of this, as others have said, comes down to women more often being primary caregivers. It might also be worth thinking about the pressure for people to move in together before relationships are stable, which is real when you are on a marginal income.

No didn’t know that and thanks for the replies. Honestly that’s an invasion of privacy in my eyes. Who you are or aren’t dating and the particulars are nobody else’s business. Especially not the Governments. Also I find the notion that some single parent’s romantic partner is somehow de facto automatically responsible for their children is archaic and absurd. Obviously if a family gets blended or if your partner wants to adopt your kids is another matter, but it shouldn’t be a default assumption.

Dervel,

I don't think it is a de facto assumption. The idea is that the family becomes responsible when you form a household. So when is that? When you get married? When you file taxes together? When you have the benefit of two incomes or at least two workers in the home?

And there's the other issue of single mothers being forced to become financially dependent on men with whom they're just forming tentative relationships.

Even if there's no financial abuse and the man is lovely, if they do the honest thing and then the relationship doesn't work out, those women are left facing weeks with no money while their UC claim is processed, or else an advance payment (i.e. a debt) which they'll have to pay back over 6-12 months from their benefits which were set at subsistence level in 2015 and have been frozen since then.

Agree that being a mother can make you vulnerable to a trap.
I got in to a bit of trouble with the DEASP in ireland but my decisions were all so fear based. I paid it back.

NZ brought in a law a couple of years ago that in cases of fraud while on the Single Parent benefit, both parties are now charged, even when just the mother filled the paperwork. Which should be obvious I'd have thought.

Sorry, not just Single Parent benefit, also others like Job seeker benefit etc. Ones where a person declares themself single.