Proven UK Benefit Fraud: Shy of the £1.5 billion allegation mark
Posted by Work Programme | Posted in benefit fraud, benefit thieves, beneft fraudsters, con-servatives, ConDem, ConDem(n) Government, Deception towards Jobcentre Plus, Department for Work and Pensions, Disability Living Allowance, Disabled Benefits, DWP, FRAIMS, Fraud Referral and Intervention Management System, fraudulent activity, Government, housing benefit, JCP, jobcentre Plus, jobseekers allowance, jsa, social security, Social Security and Child Support, The Labour Party and Conservative Party are fucking shit, uk economy, uk government, unemployment, wasting taxpayers money, Welfare Fraud, Welfare State | Posted on 04-09-2010
Tags: FOI, local content, Welfare
A Freedom of Information Act request has returned that in the 2009/10 tax year, the Department for Work and Pensions’ Fraud Referral and Intervention Management System: a system designed to record all allegations of Benefit Fraud had uncovered just £143.7 million of proven benefit fraud.
Actually, that is one hell of a lot of money! However, the figure quoted for benefit fraud in the UK is £1.5 billion… the “proven” figures are just under a tenth. Does 90p in every pound of fraud in the benefit system goes unnoticed? Seems a bit steep to me! To put it another way, the FRAIMS (tongue-in-cheek of “frame” – what it stands for came after…) system cost around £65 million to the taxpayer which is approx 45% of the discovered fraud in the last tax year.
How can the Government be so sure that £1.5 billion is the figure of fraud when even after spending goodness knows how many millions on advertising to counter fraud, they have only recently unearthed £143.7 million?
In all honestly, (I am not trying to defend these greedy bastards who steal and defraud us all… but) how does the Government know how much money is lost to fraud? Logically thinking, the only explanation is the system is aware of whom is stealing and the particulars of such; however, cannot prosecute or reclaim such money due to lack of resources.
I find that absolutely bullshit. To be able to assign £65 million and the cost of the benefit fraud advertisements from the treasury, shows a lot about the willingness of using resources to counter the problem. Of course, neither of this is about the thousands of investigators and benefit fraud hotline staff working… the resources seem to be there.
Actually, it is probably some pie-in-the-sky nonsense… If we catch 2,000 benefit cheats… there must be 50,000 out there… so if £150 million is the cost of fraud we know of, lets say a combined total of £1.5 billion.
What really is concerning is, add official error to the pile and the £1.5 billion figure peaks above £5 billion.
The Government seriously needs to get a grip over the finances… axing services is not the way. If £5 billion is fraud and error; lets total up the wasted time cost of places like Jobcentre Plus, the OTT security, NHS purchasing products more expensive than private businesses like BUPA, the welfare cheques going abroad including DLA payments to over 2000 claimants who don’t even live in the UK, the cost of EU membership etc … at the end we are probably looking at £50 billion. Good job I don’t have a shot gun after hearing that depressing news!


