More benefit fraud

What's been happening in the past few days?

In London Josef Kolendowicz, who defrauded two local authorities and the DWP out of almost £100,000, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison.

In Harrow a couple fraudulently claimed £7,626 from Harrow Council to decorate their house, not revealing they had over £30,000 in savings. A Swanley man concealed bank accounts and so fraudulently claimed over £7,000 from Sevenoaks District Council.

In Northampton Nomathemba Moche admitted receiving housing benefit, council tax benefit and incapacity benefit totalling almost £3,000 despite returning to work.

A Basingstoke woman unlawfully claimed £3,870 after failing to tell the council that her husband was working.

Javeid Akhtar and Banaras Ali from Leeds, described as brothers, made £225,000 over ten years from a benefit fraud scam involving their extended family. Both were sentenced to four and a half years in prison and they must pay almost £224,000 in compensation and £41,000 costs.

A Renfrewshire family of 13 have been charged with obtaining £569,000 in tax credits.

Huntingdonshire magistrates last week sentenced four fraudsters over a total of almost £14,000 in false claims.

And a woman from Dursley has pleaded guilty to benefit fraud after falsely claiming over £17,000. The account of her home life is (perhaps understandably) confusing, but the key point is that the fraud was deliberate.

It's reported that benefit fraudsters in Corby have stolen more than £160,000 of public money in the past year, "prompting a council crackdown on cheats". Hm. Didn't they realise it's happening everywhere?

But detection isn't always straightforward. For instance investigators in Wirral have a specially equipped vehicle to undertake covert surveillance on customers suspected of benefit fraud. The costs in time and money must be great. The fraud minister claims: "Our message to those people considering benefit theft is simple: don't do it - we will catch you". Not if detection is that time-consuming, they won't.

As for those legally on benefits, The Spectator's Coffee House blog points out that two disintegrating communities highlighted in Panorama have 28% of adults on welfare, but just 5% on jobseeker's allowance, while Peter Hitchens says 50,000 drug abusers are claiming incapacity benefit "and no doubt a lot of other benefits on top, presumably including exemption from council tax".

It is a defiance of the known laws of the land. And we reward them with pensions as if they had fought for their country, when all they've done is shame it, and all we owe them is a narrow cell and a bowl of porridge.

Worse, in a way, is the fact that the inadequate wages and pensions of postmen, school-dinner ladies and retired soldiers are plundered by the taxman and the town hall to keep these people idle in their squalid nests, where they no doubt bring misery to neighbours and to the thousands of children said (terrifyingly) to be in their care.

How did this happen? Who devised the regulations? Will anything bad happen to them?

When did we, as a people, sign this national suicide pact that rewards disgusting irresponsibility and punishes everyone else?

Separately the Daily Mail reports on film of radical Muslim preacher talking about fraudulently claiming benefits and giving advice on how to cheat the Government.

After a story about a wealthy man, he said: "There was one man, he had a lot of money - just like us, we have a lot of money today from the income support and the incapacity benefit.

"Obviously when you have the incapacity benefit, you want to make sure you walk with a limp when you leave the house just in case there's someone taking pictures.

"Obviously you don't need to tell them that, the Department of Work and Pensions."

The welfare state is spawning widespread abuse. Several of today's cases are deliberate frauds, planned from the outset. But poor people can get what for them are large amounts of money simply by not volunteering new information.

What this series of posts strongly suggests is that benefit fraud is widespread and expensive. Not all court cases are reported on the internet. Not all cases get to court. Many are dealt with administratively. Doubtless huge numbers of cases go undetected.

There are evidently many people out there who find the temptation just too great. Detection needs to become swifter and surer, and penalties I'm afraid need to become harsher, so that they do deter.

Why welfare reform is popular

Why does the government want to outflank the Tories on welfare reform with a proposal that unemployed people will be forced to take on placements or volunteer work once they have claimed benefits for more than a year?

It's partly stories like this from Southampton -

A benefits cheat, who ripped off the taxpayer for more than £40,000 over six years, has been jailed for 12 months.

It doesn't seem to have been difficult - he had three jobs. The defence lawyer said that "this was not a particularly sophisticated fraud." He just seems to have asked and have been given. For six years.

Or the story that down in Hounslow

A convent worker who used a string of false names to claim nearly £30,000 in benefits has narrowly avoided jail.

The council became suspicious when data-matching showed there was another person wth one of her surnames at the same address. The fraud lasted for four and a half, years, though. One reader comments there that

The sad fact is, pursuing benefit cheats is not cost effective.Recently released figures showed around £150 million spent to recover just £22 million.The quality of evidence required to secure a successful prosecution is a major stumbling block.

Bizarrely, the government has been accused of failing the North East over returning unemployed people to work, with the region having the country’s highest proportion of benefit claimants.

It's not up to government to find jobs for people. What happened to responsibility?

Maybe that's why the BBC (of all people!) invited a member of two conservative US think tanks to South Wales. His line is that welfare money should be cut and put into creating local jobs. He argues that the number of people claiming incapacity benefit in Wales could be reduced by two-thirds if American-style reforms were adopted.

In the US we cut people's cash benefits in the 1990s and told them they were going back to work.

They are some of the most successful policies we've ever introduced. In some states, money from benefit claimants was taken and used instead to create jobs in local companies, boosting employment opportunities.

As this blog has argued, we need the stick as well as the carrot.

How we are governed

A choice cut from Dr North in Defence of the Realm. The permanent under secretary of state for the MoD talks to a committee of MPs about the equipment programme.

…our ministers would very much like a programme which is, if anything, more focused on the kinds of equipment requirements that come out of current operations like protected vehicles, helicopters et cetera. It would be extremely surprising if the process we are going through did not lead to a consideration of that.

Yes Minister is alive and well. We know what our ministers "would very much like". It would be extremely surprising if we did not in due course get round to giving this our consideration. That would be after we have gone through a previous process [undefined].

Sir Humphrey would be proud. Give that man a gong, and meanwhile lunch at my club.

They do things differently at the DWP, it seems. Apparently within seconds of his return to the department, James Purnell (you remember him, he it was who mysteriously appeared in a photograph when he hadn't been there, he it was who predicted that 24-hour liquor licensing would lead to a café culture) had appointed David Freud as an adviser, to help implement changes in the welfare state. Given that Mr Freud cheerfully reveals Chancellor Brown's opposition to his proposals, did Prime Minister Brown know this appointment was coming?

And Mr Freud is enthusiastic.

Peter Hain was worried about the Left. Purnell is showing astonishing energy, there is going to be a much more single-minded ferocity.

All this change just because the vain one couldn't fill in a donations return! (Amusingly, The Telegraph actually writes "Peter Hain [the previous work and pensions secretary] ...". Is the vain one so soon forgotten?)

The paper tells us Mr Freud's big idea is that the private sector be put in charge of the long-term unemployed. Companies taking part would receive a "huge fee" for getting somebody to stay in a job for more than three years but nothing if they fail.

The Telegraph sets out a bizarre proposal.

Under his system, the market will decide who should receive benefit and who should go out to work. "The private sector will have to start making assessments about who they can get back into work at what cost.

If somebody is really clinically depressed, for example, [the company] might say, 'I'm not going to get this guy to hold down a job for three years because he's not up to it so I'm not going to expend my efforts on him at the moment'."

This only increases the incentive for the skivers to make themselves look like hard cases. And Mr Freud thinks there are plenty of them. "Fewer than a third of those on incapacity benefit are really too ill to get a job." There is talk of some slicing of benefits for those who won't co-operate, but how meaningful will this turn out to be? And how easy will it prove to be to get dubiously motivated people off benefit and into work against competition from enthusiastic Poles?

To be sure, Mr Freud highlights other measures in a carefully unspecific way. He says

If you want a recipe for getting people on to IB, we've got it: you get more money and you don't get hassled. You can sit there for the rest of your life. And it's ludicrous that the disability tests are done by people's own GPs - they've got a classic conflict of interest and they're frightened of legal action.

So there has to be a big change in the procedures for people entering incapacity benefit, and for their continued entitlement.

As the Financial Times points out, some people make a deliberate choice to live off state welfare payments for the quality of life.

And Mohammed Nawaz Raja, an alleged Islamic terrorist organiser says in the News of the World

"Praise be to Allah I have a car of my own. I have a five bedroom house in High Wycombe. The government is paying me. When I go to Pakistan, my family still gets paid. The system in Britain is that the government pays.

"Take for example a small family with four children, if the husband works he would get £300 to £400 a week. And if he doesn't work the government still pay him around that, so why should he work?

"If he works he gets around £350 a week and if he doesn't he gets £300. For just £50, who would work?"

Reading the account of his activities, it's hard to imagine anyone would ever employ him. Carrots can't work in his case, so a pretty useful stick has to be available. Effective policy has to go beyond the touchy feely.

Never mind. Happily for Mr Raja a solution beckons. Husbands with multiple wives have been given the go-ahead to claim extra welfare benefits following a year-long Government review. If two can live as cheaply as one, what of five?

Mr Freud claims his system can be in place within five years. Hey, hold hard there! Meanwhile, better get working on some pretty serious sticks.

If the officials are prepared to give that consideration in due course.

Robber Conway is still an MP.

To reform incapacity benefit, there have to be losers

Last May 504,000 people below the age of 35 were claiming incapacity benefit or severe disablement allowance. This includes more than 300,000 claiming for “mental and behavioural disorders”, which are among the hardest to check.

We can't afford to support all these people through their working lives. It might be a nice, touchy feely thing to do if we could give the state unlimited amounts of our money. But we can't.

Choices have to be made. If the state is to spend all of this money, perhaps improved cancer care or proper flood defences would be better choices.

Eager immigrants coming to England have taken most of the extra jobs. People on incapacity benefit are in competition with motivated people from other EU countries. The UK government can't stop them coming.

Labour's policy has two main thrusts. First, they want to coach people back into work one by one. This is expensive and slow, but probably the most cost-effective route is to pay private companies by results.

Their other new policy is tougher assessment of new applicants for incapacity benefit. But this does nothing to deal with the huge lump of people already enjoying the benefit.

Chris Grayling sketches the Tory approach.

Our initial aim will be to offer most people a place on a structured programme of support to find them a job. We know that as many as a million people claiming incapacity benefit say that they hope to get back into the workplace. We will offer them the help they need to achieve that.

Those who don't want to accept that offer will be expected to undergo a full medical check to confirm what they can and can't do now, and what they might, with the right support, be able to do in the future. It will be done by someone independent, so the relationship with a family doctor doesn't affect the outcome.

Those found to be perfectly capable of working will lose their entitlement to incapacity benefit immediately. Many have been abusing the system. They will be transferred into the normal process for Jobseekers and will be expected to start looking for work straight away. Based on the experience of other countries, we expect at least 200,000 people to be affected.

This is accompanied by warm words about helping people out of the poverty trap. But many people don't aspire to more money, just an easy life on benefits.

The carrot is going to become less and less effective, as employers can choose between keen, English speaking immigrants or natives with a poor work history. We will need to see more of the stick too. Almost every claimant can contribute something, unless they are physically housebound.

Regular and more rigorous assessments, and in the vast majority of cases you have to give something back or it's no benefit for you.

Two-pronged approach to incapacity benefit

There are good and bad people on incapacity benefit.

The case of David Le Compte shows how difficult it can be to get back into work. He highlights the bureaucratic uselessness of the DWP. Its job centre staff get paid however inadequate they are.

He wants to work. What government skills courses are likely to help him? They'll keep him off the numbers for a while, but what then?

We need a job placement agency paid by results. Not just a small bonus for placements, but the bulk of its income.

At the other end of the scale we have crooks like Glenda Askew. This wasn't an incapacity benefit case, but she defrauded the welfare system by claiming £11,604 in widow's benefits by pretending her husband was dead - for eight years. Unusually, she has been sent to prison. Usually the punishment is community service, much of which goes unserved. And these criminals can't realistically afford to pay back large sums.

Here's a proposal which should deter many of them. If they get a conviction for falsely claiming a benefit, they should be disqualified from claiming that benefit again. For ever. That should deter a lot of cheats.

There should be one exception. If the magistrate declares the offence to be merely technical (like Mr le Compte's 4p) or a genuine mistake, then entitlement could continue. Deliberate fraud would always be a disqualification. A lie on a questionnaire would mean disqualification.

Offenders must receive a punishment which means something to them. This is it.

Much ado about very little

The government's trumpeted initiative to cut the 2.7m people on incapacity benefit - who cost us £12.5bn last year - turns out to be much ado about very little. As we blogged yesterday, they aim to cut the numbers on the benefit by 20,000 people each year.

That's because the new system will only apply to new applicants for incapacity benefit. Oh, and the new tests won't be introduced until next October.

The Financial Times provides a useful analysis piece. One expert blames Whitehall resistance for the long delay in starting to tackle the problem.

Civil servants pointed out that notes validating sickness benefit had been signed by patients’ GPs, and then assessed by another doctor reporting directly to the social security department. By questioning the high numbers of people going on to IB, ministers were in effect questioning the very efficiency of the civil service – a big charge for ministers newly in government to make.

Ministers also thought the numbers on incapacity benefit would fall as claimants retired. But no, a new generation picked up on it.

As Frank Field has pointed out, people aren't stupid. If they see a free meal ticket that suits them, they're unlikely to turn it down. It's government's job to design the system so that it doesn't operate like that.

Back to the validating process. Just as war is too important to be left to the generals, so society can't leave it to doctors to decide on an individual basis how many adults it is going to have to support financially. Standards have to be set. They have to take account of affordability. And so they are political.

Maybe we have to set a number that we decide to afford. People have to be graded, with physical disabilities taking priority. There should be charities which can help people who don't score enough points to make the cut-off point. Taxpayers could choose to make voluntary donations to them.

There has to be a limit to compulsory funding by taxpayers. The government is still not gripping the problem, only tinkering.

Taxpayers can't afford this incapacity benefit

The Times splashes its revelation that almost two thousand people who are too fat to work have been paid a total of £4.4 million in benefit, with other payments going for instance to fifty sufferers from acne.

Colourful though the details are, they obscure the main point. Around 2.7 million people currently claim Incapacity Benefit, which costs £12.5bn a year, as The Sun spells out.

There are around 29 million employed.

The key point is that some 9% of the potentially economically active population are on incapacity benefit. Doubtless this gives a warm feeling to officials who sign them off. Less so to taxpayers who are given no choice about contributing.

It beggars belief that so many people are too unhealthy to do any sort of work whatever. 9% is a huge number. The government are trumpeting that their new measures will see an end to sick note culture.

It will deny Incapacity Benefit to 20,000 claimants each year.

Which - as the numbers above show - is hardly touching the problem. 2.7 million people would be reduced to 2.68 million. Are there really even 1 million people who are too incapacitated to make any contribution to society at all?

So called "support payments" cost £4,000 per household each year. Many taxpaying households need that money.

The government's tinkering for maximum publicity.

Is the tide turning against big government?

According to journalistic lore, if an article is headed by a question, the answer to it is usually No. Perhaps this is an exception.

Brown is Labour's Edward Heath, not because he is set on closer EU integration, but because both men lacked empathy, lacked imagination, were intolerant, and got stuck deep in the ruts of their own mindsets - in Brown's case, tax and spend.

It's only a few weeks ago that Brown was calling for his government to be judged by its competence. How distant that trumpet call sounds now!

Since then we've heard dire news about the nationalised health service. Respondents to the Patients' Association say they want to continue to pay for healthcare through taxation rather than insurance. But that is not the point. The question is, should the government continue to make such a mess of running this nationalised industry, or become just a purchaser.

We have also seen the misjudgement on capital gains tax. This will prove worse than entrepreneurs' protests alone suggest: there are plenty of short term speculators quietly astonished at the drop in their tax rate from 40% to 18%, and the City especially will be working on plausible-looking schemes to convert income to capital gain. I'd guess the marginal rates will be the same again within five years.

Mr Balls has demonstrated the disadvantage of being educated in the Brown school of government, where you never consult, you just spring a policy on the country. To push through a contentious policy like clawing back part of schools' surpluses, include it as part of a larger package you put out for consultation. Then it may slip through unnoticed. If not, you can withdraw it without too much loss of face.

Easily the worst and most dangerous incompetence concerns immigration and jobs. The numbers have changed and changed again, merely reinforcing the correct perception that the government doesn't know what it's doing in this area.

This is dangerous enough. But what's worse is that the government has minimal power in this area.

There are still some signs of decent growth, including the rise in retired people working and the increase in hours worked in the economy. But it is hard to see how, with the flow of immigrants, the UK’s relatively poor starting position and an environment of weakening economic growth, the employment outlook could improve in the near term.

And the government has sacrificed power over immigration to the EU and on the altar of human rights.

Brown's promise of British jobs for British workers is generally and rightly derided for the feeble spin that it was, but the government thinks that it has found a way round its dilemma, by urging employers to introduce programmes to favour those on welfare.

This policy has several problems.

1. The last thing many of those on benefits want is a job
   
   
2. Immigrants are often better qualified, with a better work ethic
   
   
3. This is surely "indirect discrimination", since it tends to be British workers who receive British benefits. Government has promoted the concept of "indirect discrimination" to limit employers' freedom to do things it doesn't like. It deserves to be hoist with its own petard.

This starts to make incompetence look routine, which in turn makes ministers look tired. Every example of waste adds to this impression. Today, for example, the Home Office's penalty payments of £35m over cancelled centres for asylum seekers are back in the news. Every week brings more examples of public sector incompetence and waste.

Tories - panicked into conference policy announcements by the threat of an election they didn't want - are starting to look fresh in contrast with this governmental tiredness. Some commentators worry that they might let some of these policies drop as their panic recedes.

Michael Gove does sound serious about giving parents a greater choice of schools, which has to be coupled with a policy making it easier for schools to grow and contract, for new schools to be set up, and for unwanted schools to die.

If the Tories hold their nerve, their empowerment of parents can make an attractive contrast with a left-wing think tank's statist proposal that all secondary school places should be allocated by lot.

As part of the debate about jobs and migrants, attention is focusing on the unwillingness of many on welfare to give up their comfortable lifestyles for the demands of paid employment. Questions are sure to be asked about the Wisconsin policy. For instance -

• In Wisconsin, benefits could be linked to performing tasks, such as sweeping up leaves in parks. How would this sit with trades unions and minimum wage legislation?
  
  
• How would we tackle the ridiculously high levels of officially recognised incapacity?
  
  
• How would time limiting of benefits work? Would women be able to stay on benefits for decades by regularly producing children?
  
  
• What happens to the able-bodied whose entitlement to benefits has expired? Should they be compulsorily supported by taxpayers, or helped through charities by those who actively want to continue to pay for their support?

On welfare the theme will have to be one of tough love, with limited reliance on taxpayers for a temporary hand up rather than lifelong support. The government could return welfare savings to taxpayers as a lump sum dividend each year, to make them more prominent.

A third theme should be that the government wastes taxpayers' money almost every time it spends it. Governments need to curb their enthusiasm to do everything.

What of big government on a wider canvas? Across the EU, migration may become a pressure point before the euro. Certainly if lawless Romanian migrants set up shanty towns outside London, as they have done outside Rome, the government would find the legal remedies at its disposal entirely inadequate.

Maybe that is only a matter of time.

Bring me your sad and your fat

What does it mean to be officially disabled?

There's a lot of it, about according to The Times - 10% of people aged 16 to 24 are disabled, and one third of people aged 50 to 65.

We are also told that

There are 6.9 million disabled people of working age in Britain – one in five of the working population.

Ill health must be sweeping the nation. Why is this epidemic not headline news every day?

Some 50.4% of disabled people are employed compared with 80.2% of nondisabled people.

So maybe official disability isn't always as bad as we first thought. Ah ha, the World Health Organisation predicts that depression will be the leading cause of disability by 2020. Why should this be? Is the future really going to be so sad?

Here's another strange thing.

There are regional variations in the prevalence of disability. Northeast England and Wales have the highest number of disabled people, with one quarter of the working age population in these regions disabled. London, the South East and the East of England have lower than average proportions of disabled people at 17 per cent.

It couldn't be, could it, that they are skiving out there in Wales?

The common complaints among the disabled of depression and back pain are among the hardest to be sure about. Sure enough, when we look more closely -

In February there were 2.43 million people claiming incapacity benefit in Britain – 41 per cent were claiming for mental and behavioural disorders (my italics).

What will be the next - ahem - big thing? More of us are going to get too fat to work. But no need to worry, reports the BBC -

Individuals can no longer be held responsible for obesity and government must act to stop Britain "sleepwalking" into a crisis, a report has concluded.

The 250 experts said excess weight was now the norm in our "obesogenic" society. The government, of course, pledged to draw up a strategy to address the issue, though the report's authors admitted proof that any anti-obesity policy worked "was scant".

So there we are. We'll be a nation of depressed fatties - doubtless with bad backs too - unable to work, bailed out by the taxes paid by immigrants.

We saw disability has regional variations. And lo! when we look at obesity -

By 2050, as many as 70 per cent of men aged 20 to 60 living in Yorkshire and Humberside, the West Midlands and the North East are likely to be obese, according to the report.

About 65 per cent of women in Yorkshire and Humberside could be obese by then.

In contrast, obesity is declining among women in the South West, with seven per cent expected to be obese by 2050 – far below the present level of 17 per cent.

About 38 per cent of men and women are predicted to be obese in the London region.

Looks like the south will be subsidising the north even more than it is now.

That is, unless the nannies can save the day. The head of nutrition and health research at the Medical Research Council said: "We need to take responsibility as a society [whatever that means] for our unhealthy lifestyle."

The minister responsible will be Dawn Primarolo, she who couldn't get tax credits right, so what hope does she have of making us thinner? "We as ministers", she said, "have to balance encouraging people to engage with information without looking like we are being dictatorial" (my italics, though I don't think there's anything sinister in the phrasing, I think she's just rather thick).

In future, will suppliants for tax credits have to send her quarterly weight charts?

The charity Weight Concern, however, differ. They say the Government will indeed have to take some unpopular decisions ... such as restricting fast food outlets (eh?) and tackling food manufacturers. But "this is not something the Government can solve on its own", they added - I'll say that again - "and people do have to exercise personal responsibility".

Exercising personal responsibility was a Perth shoplifter who stole £7000-worth of clothes because he was an alcoholic and his incapacity benefit wasn't enough to buy as much drink as he wanted. Pretty able-bodied if he could carry that many clothes. And disposing of them showed initiative too.

And a Cambridge man on incapacity benefit was well enough to fulfil a supervisory role as a favour sometimes in a restaurant, as well as driving home after he had been disqualified for drink-driving.

What a system - corrupting of individuals, unaffordably expensive.

If so many people are "disabled", then the definition of "disabled" is wrong. We need to move the goalposts, so that fewer people are subsidised.

And if I am fat, that is my fault. Not the supermarket's, not the restaurant's, not even Dawn's and Gordon's. And certainly not society's.

Our bloated welfare state

More from the front line. In Great Yarmouth a man claimed £3,531 more in council benefits than he should have done after inheriting £42,000 on the death of a relative. The council uncovered the money in a spot check. He has also been receiving incapacity benefit for depression.

In Northampton a man who claimed £34,363 incapacity benefit while pretending to be unable to work was jailed for 18 months. In theory he could take over 300 years to repay the money. According to the report, "his bogus claim for incapacity benefit had been brought to the attention of fraud investigators" - presumably by an informant.

A Runcorn woman has been fined £300 for failing to declare a change in circumstances which meant she received £2,824 overpayment of benefits. The council's housing benefit matching service discovered she had been receiving working tax credits but not declaring them. But it took them 9 months to bring this to light.

Electro-kevin on his blog tells us that he and his wife earn £47,000 a year between them.

I know that my remuneration will be modest compared to many readers but it is still in the region of 30% above the national average - I don't expect to live like a king and yet I am continually brassic!

But -

Here's the rub. My brother who is welfare dependant (incapacity benefit) along with his stepdaughter and her illegitimate two year-old lives no worse than I do. They also live in a three bed semi (provided at subsidy by the council) - but they have:
- Sky telly
- A modern flat screen surround sound entertainment system
- The latest PS3
- Each has a mobile phone
- They all smoke
- They have a take-away curry every week
- They are all obese
We have, and are, none of the above. Our expenses generally go on educating the kids, involving them in activities and my wife and I belong to karate and a council gym. Bruv spent his summer holiday in a chalet, we spent ours in a tent.

"You'd expect my brother and his brood to be grateful and courteous about their good fortune", he says, "but they are not".

They are often rude and look like shit - his stepson has already taken to the dependency lifestyle and at the ripe old age of 17 lives in a flat with his girlfriend and their illegitimate daughter - furnished courtesy of the taxpayer.

The simple rule of thumb ... is that if you pay people to act like scum then that is exactly what they will do.

Jeff Randall reports the view of a small business owner.

He despairs at local youngsters' poor work ethic, but heaps praise on the four Poles he employs. "They work harder and are eager to do the job properly. Absenteeism has fallen since they arrived. What's more, they are really nice people."

This is a theme that I will hear time and again on my travels. "We are too soft on welfare claimants. Some locals come along for a job interview with no intention of working. They simply want their cards signed so that they can claim benefits."

The political classes don't consider it nice to advocate policies which would deal with this scrounging. So working taxpayers like Kevin continue to subsidise them - which doesn't seem to trouble politicians' consciences at all.

Incapacity benefit

Trade union representative Dorothy Abbott, who was given a six-month suspended sentence after admitting a £28,000 benefits fraud, remained suspended on full pay by her state sector employees Wigan Council, it was reported on August 13. It took an ex-councillor to call in the Local Government Ombudsman to investigate what he dubbed an "outrageous waste of council taxpayers money". Mr Brierley said: "When Ms Abbott admitted to the fraud charges on July 17, Wigan Council continued paying her full wages and that continues today even though her position is now absolutely untenable".

A couple in Norwich claimed more than £12,000 in benefits while working as florists. John Knott, 60, has been sentenced to do 150 hours unpaid work and there is a four month curfew on his wife. Alcohol consumption led to 2,300 claims of incapacity benefit in East Anglia during 2006/07. Astonishingly, one in five people in Norwich is classed as a binge drinker.

Walter Porter, 60, of Jarrow, admitted claiming £8,000 in sickness benefit while working as a builder.

Karen Hyndman, 47, of Carmarthenshire, admitted wrongly claiming thousands of pounds in benefits while working as a cleaner. She cited financial hardship. She was overpaid £940 in rent allowance, £171 in council tax benefit and £3,250 in incapacity benefit. She has repaid the overpayments. She was sentenced to a 12-month supervision order and ordered to pay £75 costs.

In Swansea, Richard Todd, 38, was claiming incapacity benefit and disability living allowance while working as a labourer. He has asthma and diabetes, and was claiming benefit between June 2005 and January 2006. But he had failed to tell the benefits agency that he was earning a wage and received £4,011 in benefit payments which he was not entitled to. Todd admitted failing to inform the department of a change of circumstances, namely that he was working, when claiming income support. Look at the other benefits he was gathering in. He admitted similar offences in relation to claims for incapacity benefit, disability living allowance, housing benefit and council tax benefit. He was sentenced to do 80 hours of unpaid work for the community and pay £75 towards prosecution costs.

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In Harrow, Stephen Wackett, 53, applied for housing and council tax benefit in 1997 for himself and his wife. Wackett told Harrow Council the couple's only income was incapacity benefit, but in 2005 it emerged he had been receiving a pension since 1990, while his wife had a part-time job. He illegally claimed £14,887.65 in housing benefit and £4,895.20 in council tax benefit, between June 1998, and March 2005. He got four months in prison, suspended for 18 months. He was also given 100 hours community service, and a six month overnight curfew, as well as being ordered to pay £250 costs.

In an attempt to snare more benefit cheats, the council has become the first authority in the country to pilot voice recognition analysis. The software detects stress patterns in a caller's voice, showing if they are lying when applying for benefits.

Callers are asked a series of questions as a control.

Benefit fraud costs the council £250,000 a year, and they are hoping VRA will help save them some money.

Since its introduction in May, the council say the system has spotted 126 fraudulent claims, totalling nearly £40,000.

Finally in this review the Coventry Telegraph reports that a fraud investigation team based in one of the county's Job Centre's clawed back £527,000 in payments from cheats last year, resulting in 148 prosecutions. The paper reports that investigators "now" have the authority to check suspects' bank accounts to see if they are earning, or receiving money in addition to their benefit claim, and to check employment records. "Local councils and utility companies are also free to give information which could help snare culprits." It adds that "Anyone paid too much benefit has to pay all the money back to the taxpayer. Those who don't could face a criminal record." Eh? Surely all benefit fraudsters should?

Doubtless this is the tip of the iceberg.

More benefit fraud

A north London psychiatrist who took thousands of pounds in income support while earning £50,000 a year and owning two homes has been struck off. Sudanese trained Dr Yak had two jobs simultaneously, as well as claiming income support, housing and council tax benefit, and incapacity benefit.

And a trade union convener who represents employees of Wigan council and was chairman of Wigan Constituency Labour Party has admitted a £28,500 benefits fraud. She has pleaded guilty to failing to notify a change of circumstances between December 2001 and November 2005 by not revealing she was working. She continued to accept incapacity benefit.

These are not inadequates confused by the system. In both cases there was knowing fraud. Doubtless the tip of a very big iceberg.

Dr Rant has a post explaining how - with every kindness - the unemployed come to find themselves on incapacity benefit, wittily titled "The Myth of Full Employment: My part in its creation". As he remarks:

It’s a win-win deal for everyone (EXCEPT THE TAXPAYERS) and all achieved via one stroke of the medical pen.

A win-win deal for everyone actually present at the transaction. The poor (increasingly poor) taxpayer is unregarded. Who's fighting his corner on these occasions?

Subsidising the underclass

Labour has failed on the welfare payments front. As The Sunday Times highlights, children experiencing family breakdown are 75% more likely to fail at school, 70% more likely to be a drug addict and 50% more likely to have alcohol problems.

In the past 10 years the number of lone parents has risen from 1.6m to 1.9m, and the evidence on unmarried versus married couples is persuasive; nearly half of the former split up before their child has reached the age of five, compared with one in 12 for the latter.... Yet Gordon Brown has presided over tax and benefit changes that discriminate against married couples, particularly those on low incomes.

A one-earner married couple in which the earner moves from part-time to full-time work faces a marginal tax rate of more than 90% in Britain, the highest in the western world, compared with an average of 55% for other industrial countries. A two-earner couple with a combined income of £35,000 would be nearly £5,500 a year better off living apart, thanks to the perverse way Brown’s tax credits work.

And the cost is huge. "Britain spends more on welfare benefits excluding pensions, £79 billion, than on education, £73 billion."

Family breakdown costs the taxpayer a conservatively estimated £24 billion a year. Add in the costs of educational underachievement, £18 billion, and crime, £60 billion, and the bill comes to more than £100 billion.

The News of the World highlights a case where "a married couple revealed how they split up — because under Britain's crazy benefit system they are better off living apart". The husband says:

There's no point in us being together if we get more money by living apart. It's ridiculous. Surely if you work you expect to earn more than you'd get on the dole.

We live in a society where people can have children and get them supported by the state.

It's unfashionable, and it sounds hard. But should taxpayers be paying out £73bn a year on welfare benefits? The Times points out that

3.5m are on benefits that place no requirement on them to work; 350,000 children have drug-addicted parents and 1m parents who are alcoholics; 10% of children leave school with no educational qualifications. The link between this failure and crime is powerful; 73% of young offenders admit to no academic attainment.

Martin Wolf made the point some time ago in the Financial Times that people respond to incentives. If you give them an economic incentive to have children outside a stable relationship, many will take the money.

Labour has comprehensively failed on welfare benefits. And who was the major architect of Labour's welfare strategy? Step forward, Gordon Brown.

Criminal stupidity

Barry Marsh deserves a post to himself. He was supposed to be surviving on £82-a-week benefits after claiming he could not work due to a "bad back".

But a coach he and his family were travelling on in Turkey overturned. Describing their ordeal to his local paper in Portsmouth, he revealed he had visited the country on holiday for the past seven years.

Staff at his local Jobcentre saw the article, which led to a fraud inquiry. It discovered that he had thousands of pounds in secret bank accounts; he had paid a substantial deposit to buy a brand new Ford Transit van; and he was co-habiting while claiming to live alone.

When police raided his home, they discovered £7,000 cash hidden in the kitchen along with a jar filled with £600 in £1 coins. Police seized the cash and £5,740 was later confiscated under the Proceeds of Crime Act after it was found to have been earned illegally.

Marsh has now pleaded guilty to a £31,000 benefit fraud and could face jail.

Incapacity benefit - a burden on society

There are 2.5m people on incapacity benefit, of whom over a million are malingering, says the Evening Standard. Alistair Darling agrees that

We’ve still too many people who are on benefit, especially incapacity benefit. We may have slowed down the rate of people coming onto Incapacity Benefit, but it’s still too high. Now, Peter Hain will be looking at reforms. We have a real interest to make sure it actually bites, otherwise we’ve got this problem where we’re going to have to support quite a sizeable number of people in this country on benefits, more or less indefinitely, and that’s expensive. And it’s also not good for them.

The LSE says there were a million people on incapacity benefits last year because of mental illness - a condition which is hard to disprove.

A study into "hidden unemployment" puts the jobless level in the north at 9.8% compared to the official figure of 3.5%, the worst in Britain.

• On Newcastle's Cowgate Estate almost a third of the working-age population are on incapacity benefit and are hidden from the unemployment statistics.
  
  
• Manchester has 38,815 working-age adults in the city being paid incapacity benefit - equivalent to one in six people, and far higher than the national average. The employment rate is 63.1% - one of the lowest of any city

In Wales, the areas with the highest incapacity benefit claimant as a percentage of the population, at 12%, are Merthyr Tydfil, Rhymney and Rhondda. In Aberavon, the Cynon Valley and Blaenau Gwent, 11% are on incapacity benefit. Llanelli and Ogmore are both at 10%.

More than 200 Suffolk alcoholics are claiming benefits totalling millions of pounds a year because they are unable to work.

The People claims that benefit scroungers from Glasgow, Middlesborough and Sunderland have moved to Margate to become "benefits boozers". Well worth reading in full for the detail.

In the courts, two Redditch men have been punished for benefit fraud. Gary Ellicott was ordered to repay the outstanding overpayment of £205.18 through a compensation order and fined £100, which doesn't seem a major punishment. Paul Griffiths was sentenced to a 12-month community rehabilitation order for continuing to claim incapacity benefit, income support, housing benefit and council tax benefit for over a year while working as a welder. His sentence will include 70 hours of unpaid work. He was also ordered to pay £4,332.58 compensation to repay the overpayments of housing benefit and council tax benefit that were still outstanding - what about the incapacity benefit?

In Norfolk, a man falsely claimed more than £19,000 in benefits, including incapacity benefit while working as a window cleaner. He was jailed for a year, suspended for 18 months, and given a four-month curfew order and ordered to do 150 hours unpaid work. He also was made to pay £200 towards costs to the prosecution. He is said to be anxious to continue repaying his ill-gotten gains.

Nearly 200,000 people have informed on friends, colleagues and family to the taxman in the year since a confidential hotline was set up.

Another crook on incapacity benefit

A Lincolnshire man stole money from his girlfriend's mother's bank account to fund his gambling addiction, Skegness magistrates heard. Steven Troop, 25, had also spent money a fellow tenant had given him to pay her rent, the court was told.

He admitted stealing £1,120 from a Lloyds TSB bank account belonging to Jacqueline Lammiman. He also admitted stealing £300 cash from Crystal Bowness at Mablethorpe on April 30.

Troop was sentenced to a community order of 12 months supervision with a requirement to attend the enhanced thinking skills programme. He was also ordered to pay £1,420 compensation and £60 costs. Magistrates ordered the money be paid at £10 per week.

How likely is that?

Mr David Eager, representing Troop, said his client, who was on incapacity benefit, had made it clear he wished to repay the money as soon as he could.

Benefit fraud brings community service

A dance teacher who falsely claimed £8,000 in disability benefits was caught taking salsa classes. John Dennis of Aberystwyth admitted 17 cases of making false claims and was ordered to carry out 200 hours of community service. His lawyer said, "He appreciates the criminality of his actions and has shown remorse. He is trying to pay the money back".

A Daily Mail reader comments

He's 'trying' to pay the money back ...? Why isn't he being MADE to pay the money back ?

Another writes

I've got arthritis in my knee and drive 110 miles a day round trip to work every day to support my family - I've never even thought of stopping work and claiming disability allowance. It's nice to know my taxes over the last four years have funded this fraudster. I'd ban him and his kind for life from ever claiming benefits again and ensure he pays back (not just tries to!) every penny. In Blair and Brown's Britain unfortunately his behaviour is only encouraged.

An interesting line.

Meanwhile, a Swindon man who "plundered almost £30,000 in benefits he wasn't entitled to has walked free from court" (though he could have received about £16,000 in tax credits, making the notional loss to the public purse £12,222. Community service again.

No compensation order was made as the Department of Work and Pensions uses its civil powers to recover the money.

Is this regime a deterrent? You get some community service and you have to pay the money back if you can.

How much real disapproval do they get from their friends and colleagues? And what were their chances of being caught?

If the chances of being caught are low, this statistically represents a good gamble, like driving without a licence.

Incapacity in the sun

It's actually The People which has found a benefits cheat in Torremolinos.

He told benefits chiefs in the UK a serious back injury caused by a car crash has left him unable to work.

But he openly boasts that since he has been in Spain he has earned about £350 a week as a handyman and another £100 or so as a barman.

He has to make regular visits to Britain for medical checks to allow him to carry on claiming DLA, but he says, "They can't really tell if your back is bad or not."

The paper says that the Department for Work and Pensions (that's us) has had 12,000 incapacity benefit claims from more than 20 countries.

A quarter of them are from Brits living in Spain, 2,570 are from Ireland and another 1,600 are from France.

The rest are from as far a field as Australia and the Caribbean.

Why do we pay them?

Incapacity in Manchester

Karan Hobson in Manchester belatedly admitted cheating the benefits system of £15,000. (Actually she cheated taxpayers.) She claimed she struggled to get out of the bath, but she was snapped lifting a vacuum cleaner into her car on the way to one of her cleaning jobs, despite claiming that she could not walk more than 150 yards, and – because of a road accident – suffered severe pains in her back and had brain damage.

Who certified these false medical conditions?

One person commenting at the Manchester Evening News site excuses her because of the Iraq war. Another writes

As a cripple I am appalled by these benefit cheats. I worked all my life up to the age of 50 when I was brought down with an agressive form of muliple sclerosis two years ago. I only wish I could work as I have never claimed for anything and even now feel bad about claiming. Cheats give us all a bad name and should be made to pay back every penny they have been paid and then fined heavily on top of that. I would'nt be suprised if her car is a motability car complete with disabled badge. Yes I feel bitter, I don't like having to depend on others and find it hard to cope with being so helpless. Cheats are thieves.

Others say

It's getting absolutley ridiculous. Us hard working people should give it all up and live on benefits, they seem better of than us and we get a free makeover. The story does'nt even tell us if she has to pay it back or not. Fraud and theft and all she got is a curfew? What deterrant is that? Heavy hoover my ****.

More investigators need to be employed to stop these benefit cheats but as the prisons are full, where is the deterrant ? This scrounger should be forced to sell up to pay back what she fraudulently scrounged.

She stole £15,000 from taxpayers and has managed to avoid jail? This is a joke. She also dodged paying tax by failing to declare that she had a job.

This really send a great message to people who might consider swindling the system. I might do it myself - I woke up with a stiff neck this morning.

These brisk viewpoints deserve a hearing.

Manchester is one of 15 areas across Britain that will share in a £32m Deprived Areas Fund, set up by the DWP, says the paper. The latest figures show that nearly one in three working-age adults in the city (30.2 per cent) remain `economically inactive'. "And that means simply that, for whatever reason, they don't work."

Incapacity benefit again

More than 2,000 people in East Anglia are claiming benefits and unable to work because of alcohol-related sickness, reports the Norwich Evening News. Across the country there are 49,720 claimants of benefits because of alcohol-related sickness, at a cost of £1bn.

A DWP spokesman said:

We acknowledge that people are claiming incapacity benefits for different reasons from in the past.

Mental health problems have by and large replaced industrial injuries as the main reason why people are claiming incapacity benefits.

The latest figures show the number on incapacity benefits is 2.67 million.

The question is, can we support over two and a half million people on incapacity benefit?