How the system encourages benefit fraud

Two angles on the benefits system today - both of them showing how the bad design encourages fraud.

The first illustrates how the benefit system favours households with single parents.


You can see why the philosopher kings who designed the welfare system in their ivory towers wanted to help disadvantaged single parent households. But on the receiving end we have not inert chess pieces which the philosopher kings can move at will, but human beings who see where their advantage lies. These arrangements encourage family break-up, and they encourage parents to pretend they are single when they are not. Which is fraud.

The few cases of benefit fraud which are prosecuted often result in community penalties. This report explains why they are a soft option.

Suspended sentence orders rose more than twenty-fold from the second quarter of 2005 to the second quarter of 2008 - up from 484 to almost 11,842. The use of community orders rose more than threefold from 9,547 to 33,672. But there was little evidence that they had any success in curbing the rising prison population, the report said.

Almost half of all orders are breached. And the courts frequently fail to punish those who breach their community orders or suspended sentence orders by locking them up.

But one probation officer said those breaching the orders rarely got a tough punishment and 'that gives completely the wrong message'.

He added: 'You go to court for a breach and you don't get sent to prison [...] and all your mates tell everybody else about it. It doesn't have the deterrent effect that it's meant to have.'

Another officer complained that offenders were 'coming out of magistrates court and they're laughing their heads off and giving like two fingers to the Probation Service. What does that do for us as a service?'

A third officer said: 'In terms of enforcement, people can go back to court three, four times now and the courts are still not taking on board that this person will not comply, and they just keep asking for more reports.'

The officer said it was ridiculous 'to call something a suspended sentence order when actually it isn't suspended - because you can have two or three chances'.

Benefit fraud probably costs £2bn a year. That's huge. Even among the cases detected, prosecution is rare, and punishment is often meaningless.

Effectively the state condones benefit fraud on a massive scale.