More benefit fraud

Allegations of benefit fraud rarely hit the national press, unless perhaps the accused live in Dewsbury. But every week court cases are reported in local media around the country. These in turn are only the worst of the frauds picked up by the bodies which hand out our money - most of them are dealt with administratively. Together they in turn probably represent only a small proportion of the benefit fraud that goes on up and down the country day in and day out.

One man who did make it to the national media is the ex-mayor of Pembroke who officiated in 67 football matches while claiming mobility and care allowances, and admitted two charges of illegally obtaining benefit amounting to £9,233. He was filmed officiating at a football match in March 2007. Subsequent checks found that during the 2005-2006 season he had officiated in 34 matches. The following season, he officiated at 33. It's taken 13 months to get to this guilty plea in court.

Benefits can attract organised crime. A Nigerian woman who was a housing official in London bought a baby in Nigeria, brought it to Britain, and demanded priority housing for her and her "son". Police believe this is one of a growing number of examples of "child trafficking" for benefit fraud. Senior detectives fear that "thousands" of children are being smuggled into Britain for benefit fraud, and privately admit that trafficking legislation is not working. Police complain that the Crown Prosecution Service is "not bold enough" in pursuit of child trafficking cases. Instead of prosecutions under new legislation, cases like yesterday's are being brought under the lesser crime of "facilitation" of illegal entry into the Britain.

Most detected fraud is more mundane. Lee Simms from Chester-le-Street fraudulently claimed housing and council tax benefit worth almost £19,000. He failed to declare income received from various full time jobs, but claimed his only income was from his partner's part-time earnings, child benefit and tax credits. He also failed to report two periods of employment for his partner and a period when she was in receipt of maternity allowance. Notice how the system relies on claimants to keep reporting changes in their circumstances voluntarily even though they are giving up substantial sums of money.

A Heston man failed to tell the council he was not entitled to benefits because his wife was working and receiving income from tax credits. The paper reports that "he was caught by a computer system which looks for suspicious financial activity. Government departments and financial institutions compared data on Mandan then referred the case to Hounslow's benefit fraud unit for further investigation". Well that's good, but the fraud ran for a year, from May 2005 to May 2006, during which Mr Mandan claimed £4,700 in housing benefit and £844 in council tax benefit. And it took a further 11 months for the case to come to court. This is the clunky, slow state sector.

A Horden man claimed benefits for a crippling back condition while working in a job that required him to walk up to three miles a day, though he had said he couldn't walk unaided. He had been receiving low rate Disability Living Allowance since 1998 and started claiming high rate allowance from April 2002 when the condition worsened, but from November 2005 to May 2007 he worked in three physically demanding jobs. A renewed claim was made in November 2006, which said his condition was much the same, but he was re-interviewed in April 2007. He received a benefits overpayment of £4,470 and has just come to court.

A Longbenton woman fraudulently received benefits of £5,414 after failing to declare she had been receiving a private pension "since at least April 2000", and that she had also been employed for more than three years. This went on from April 2000 and September 2007.

A Weybridge woman admitted failing to notify the correct authorities that her partner had been living with her and her children from June 2003 to April 2007 and was in full-time employment. During this long period she was overpaid £32,389 in benefit.

A Hounslow woman "who cheated the council out of £17,000 in housing benefit by keeping her husband's employment a secret has escaped a prison sentence", reports the local paper. She claimed the money over three years - from June 2003 to November 2006 - even though her situation had changed and she was no longer entitled to the benefits, and "was caught by the council's benefit fraud unit after being tipped off by Government officials whose computer data matching service found her details to be suspicious".

A Walsall man who illegally claimed over £24,000 has been given a suspended prison sentence because he repaid the money from the £30,000 of savings he had failed to declare. The Express & Star reports that "Sharpe is the latest benefits cheat to be brought to justice in the Black Country".

On Tuesday, Amanda Sambrooks, 48, of Branfield Close, Coseley, was given an 18-month community order for continuing to claim income support, housing benefit and council tax relief despite inheriting a cash windfall of £60,000.

On April 4, mother-of-three Joanne Wadsley, of All Saints Way, West Bromwich, was given 100 hours of unpaid work for fiddling £24,000 income support while her boyfriend was living at her house.

A Mold bingo caller has been convicted of benefit fraud for the fourth time after he failed to volunteer the information that he was working. Obviously the right punishment for a habitual criminal is a conditional discharge. He was also ordered to pay compensation of £969.

"A Willingham-by-Stow woman who was involved in a benefit fraud fiddle for six years netted more than £44,000 she was not entitled to". She said she was unemployed and a single parent and had no other income other than child benefit. As a result income support was granted. But then the DWP received an anonymous tip that she had been living with the father of her children.

Finally, to put these individual cases in context. I've blogged before about the success of voice recognition software at Harrow Council in reducing claims. Lambeth Council is now claiming that it has prevented £450,000 in possible benefit fraud.

A council spokesman the project, run in partnership with the Department of Work and Pensions, has proved so successful that there are now plans to extend it.

The clunky state should have extended it across the country long since. The state's systems do mostly seem to be 50 years behind the times.

The Budget is window-dressing

This blog is highly unexcited about tomorrow's budget. As Roger Bootle says:

This Budget will not be a firecracker. They never are nowadays. Indeed, the institution is a bit like Parliament in microcosm.

The outward form is still largely the same, which gives the appearance of continuity, but in reality the life has gone out of it. The important events are happening outside the Westminster bear pit. The Budget should be regarded as essentially a piece of political theatre.

- just as Richard North keeps stressing about the EU's primacy. Indeed, the parallel is even more striking. Bootle continues:

What happens to the economy will be determined by events abroad, how much banks cut back on their lending and what happens to the housing market. These factors will together determine whether we experience a slowdown, a recession or a slump. The Chancellor, like the rest of us, will be largely a hapless bystander.

That doesn't stop the FT's Philip Stephens devoting today's column to it. On strategies he writes that

Part of Mr Osborne's answer is that he would cut deep into welfare bills by getting more people into work. Sounds easy? I well remember a Tory social security minister faced with that challenge during the 1990s. To lop just £1bn from the benefit budget, he remarked, was to take £1,000 from each of one million people. Which million were his critics thinking of?

This is lazy, top down thinking. Who knows how much money is to be saved by attacking benefit fraud properly? It may not be one million people, it may not be £1bn. But if a piece of software can save one local council over £335,000 (34% more fraud than they'd thought they were suffering), and more than a quarter of their claimants are saying they do not need the benefits as their conditions have changed, what scope is there for savings nationally?

On the basis of these results it would pay the software company to offer the software free to every authority in return for (say) 20% of savings over the following 12 months, capped at (say) three times what the software would have cost.

Benefit fraud is a crime. So offenders should have to pay back twice the amount of the fraudulent benefit, and not be eligible for further benefits until they have. Publicise these penalties hard, well in advance.

This would be a better deterrent than a Fraud Minister bleating that benefit fraudsters are bound to be caught - a lie, of course, benefit fraud has been estimated to cost the DWP alone £690m a year. That's in addition to frauds on local authorities.

If the professional compassionate classes are concerned that people will be disadvantaged, let them set up a charity to support benefit fraudsters and solicit donations from the public. This blog is not saying that needy benefit fraudsters should never receive any money from anyone. Just that more money shouldn't be available to them from the state they have defrauded until they have paid the financial penalty.

Politically this isn't fuzzy enough to be a starter. On the same page of today's FT as Philip Stephens, Gideon Rachman regrets the taboos that apply to the public discussion of policy. Lazy thinking from Philip Stephens doesn't help.