No, not MEPs. Not MPs. A look at some benefit fraudsters. Stealing from us seems to be easy for them, as well as for MEPs and MPs.Thus a 61-year old pipe fitter from Portsmouth managed to claim some £10,000 of benefits. He had been claiming income support, incapacity benefit, housing benefit and council tax benefit while still earning a living.
In Market Harborough a woman failed to tell Harborough District council her husband had returned to work, so that the family was overpaid £3,651.
In Scotland a widow has been jailed for a year for defrauding Stirling Council of more than £58,000 in housing and council tax benefits over seven years. She and and her late husband had kept the existence of his BBC pension a secret in order to claim the money.
A fraudster who worked for the Saudi Arabian embassy has been jailed for 15 months for falsely claiming almost £30,000 in housing benefits. Mohamed Ali Gubara had been claiming housing benefit for his Ealing home from January 2003 to August 2006 but never mentioned his other homes in Brentford and South London. The total value of the two properties is more than £500,000. He also failed to declare that he worked for the Saudi Military Attaché’s Office for almost the entire time he was claiming benefits. Ealing Council is seeking to claim back the money owed through the sale of Mr Gubara’s properties.
Lesser social security frauds are reported from Derry. A woman claimed Income Support totalling £2,838 while failing to declare she had capital. She was given a two month prison sentence suspended for eighteen months and will have to pay a fine of £300 and court costs of £49. A man wrongfully cashed Jobseekers Allowance cheques totalling £161. He was given a conditional discharge for two years and ordered to pay court costs of £42. And a woman claimed Income Support totalling £530 while failing to declare she was working. She was fined £400 and ordered to pay court costs of £46. All three will have to repay the money they wrongfully obtained.
These are reports from just the last few days. Does that suggest that the penalties aren't much of a deterrent?
When I blogged Harrow Council's experimental voice recognition system in September (it analyses voice patterns for signs of stress shown by possibly fraudulent claimants), it had saved the council £40,000 in 3-4 months. "Benefit fraud", it was said, "costs the council £250,000 a year".
Now it has been renamed a Voice Risk Analysis (VRA) system, and we are being told it has helped Harrow Council save around £336,711 in benefit payouts - that is, a massive 34% more than the total fraud the council had thought they were suffering.
Since Harrow Council started the £63,000 trial in the month of May last year, more than a quarter of claimants said they did not need the benefits as their conditions had changed.Harrow’s saving consisted of £284,461 in housing benefit and £52,249 in council tax benefit.
What lessons does this suggest?
- This is a crude filtering system. Undoubtedly it doesn't catch all the benefit fraud.
- Fraud is higher than the council - and therefore the government - thought.
- The system is paying for itself in spades, so why not stop the pilot and roll it out nationally now?
- Penalties clearly don't deter enough. Maybe they should include repaying at least twice the amount, with no entitlement to any benefits until that's been done.
3 comments:
Enough of this crap PS , I am a double doctorate and was on Incapacity Benefit following a serious accident . I tried to get work , unsuccessfully , and went to the job centre only to be told , twice , to " go home and put your feet up " . I ended up doing voluntary work for some 35/40 hours a week , mostly in the health field ,for the exorbitant sum of £127 a week ( my I.B. ).
So depart in a reciprocatory manner dear PS , we are not all scroungers .
In all fairness to those convicted of minor benefit "fraud", it is very easily done and isn't always deliberate.
Three years ago, my husband and I were forced to apply for benefits when he became poorly. The whole process was a nightmare.
Despite immediately registering for Income Support and Housing Benefit , a catalogue of cock-ups by the benefits agencies meant we waited 5 weeks for the former and didn't receive the latter for 3 months! By the time the HB cheques did start to arrive, husband was back at work and it became nigh on impossible to link the individual payments made with specific dates of unemployment. It was all just so damn complicated.
We too were informed (about a year later) that we had been overpaid and - despite hours and hours on the phone to about every 12 year old employed by the benefits agencies concerned (and it's always a different one) we eventually had no choice but to pay up, though I am still convinced to this day that they got it wrong. What made it all worse was that we were made to feel like criminals for even daring to question these arrogant little Hitlers. It's impossible to communicate with them! For the most part they are as thick as two short planks and just don't care! The whole system seems to be run by bossy juveniles who haven't a clue what they're doing and is in total meltdown. Absolute total nightmare!
To the doctor ...
Do I say every claimant is a scrounger? No.
Hi jo ...
I completely accept what you say. I'd expect most government administration to be inadequate, and the systems are so complicated that I can well see how cock-ups would be almost impossible to unravel. That's why I'm more interested in fraud rather than mess-ups.
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