Benefit fraud cases show national action is needed

A Farnworth woman claimed housing benefit, saying she needed it to pay her rent. But she was using it to pay the mortgage. She made nine false claims, from 1998 to 2004, resulting in a total of £30,784 in housing benefit being paid to her. But property owners are not eligible for housing benefit.

She made three of the false claims after having been given a conditional discharge for a separate benefit fraud - she pleaded guilty in October 2000 to illegally claiming benefits while working as a cleaning lady. But it seems no one thought to look at her other benefit claim for a further six years. Well done, chaps. Although the fraud was discovered in November 2006, her guilty plea has just come to court. Rightly she has been sent to prison.

A Bedford man has been jailed for eight months after admitting benefit frauds totalling £22,970. He started claiming from March 1997 and continued until January 2007 even though he held at least seven bank accounts which he had not declared. The council decided he had stopped being eligible for benefits in April 2002. So for nearly five years he had undeclared bank accounts. Mr Uddin's bank accounts peaked at £27,000.

Both these cases cry out for elementary database matching. If benefit fraud is running at £700m a year, might it not be worth while to check every claimant for housing benefit against the Land Registry database, and to check every benefit claimant against banks' databases? There is no human rights issue here. If you want taxpayers to support you, you should have to sign a waiver to allow checks of other databases. Claimants' names and addresses can be sent to the banks, who will only have to report positive matches. None of this is rocket science, even for the state sector.

The BBC among others reports on a Huyton woman who claimed to be so severely disabled that she needed help feeding herself, but worked as a dinner lady. She has been given a suspended jail term after she was caught on camera by benefit fraud investigators preparing food for over 400 schoolchildren, even though she received a Motability car and over £80,000 in benefits. She had been working as an assistant cook at a local school since 2000 using both her maiden name and a fictitious name, as well as a false national insurance number and date of birth. It took a tip-off from a member of the public to start an investigation.

The judge at Liverpool Crown Court seems to have bent over backwards to avoid sending Kim Toner to prison for her long term criminality. She was ordered to repay the cash (ha ha, how will she do that?) and given an 18-month suspended sentence. She was also ordered to undertake 300 hours unpaid work in the community and was made the subject of a six-month curfew which means she has to be home by 7pm every night. Yeah, right.

A Gloucester couple "who lived the high life while on state benefits" have been ordered to pay back £10,000 of the benefits they falsely claimed. They took three Caribbean holidays, filled their home with expensive furniture and drove around in a Range Rover. Mr James had admitted obtaining more than £31,000 in Income Support by deception, and with his wife, to obtaining more than £8,400 in housing and council tax benefit by deception. He had benefited from £169,694.29 of funds he could not (or would not) account for but was left with only £10,000 that he could pay back. For his wife, the benefit figure was £4,216.01 and the realisable amount was a nominal £10. He has 10 months to pay or face six months' in prison. She has 28 days or face seven days in default. They have got off lightly. The judge sentenced Mrs James to an 18-month community rehabilitation order with supervision. Mr James was sentenced to 12 months' jail suspended for two years with two years' supervision and 100 hours' unpaid work.

One Gloucester man comments:

This area of Gloucester is full of people who do not work and claiming for everything. I am fed up being a taxpayer and seeing these people sponge of the workers of this country. I suggest any body who is claiming after 6 months does National Service. I think you will then find these people will have got a job.

Action against such deliberate criminality is patchy and slow, and sentences are usually inadequate. Do not expect the new style listening government to do anything more than wring its hands and mouth platitudes.