Housing benefit fraud figure unbelievable

As the Express points out, housing benefit cost over £17bn last year. It's high in the benefit spending league table. Risible government numbers put housing benefit fraud at £210m. That's a mere 1.2% of the total housing benefit paid out but it's a quarter of all the benefit fraud which they're prepared to admit to. So if you believed the government's figures, this would be a very important benefit to scrutinise.

Tory research has identified Hackney as the borough with the highest proportion of housing benefit dependence – nearly 42%. Elsewhere in London, Tower Hamlets, Newham, Haringey and Islington had over a third of households on housing benefit. Outside the capital, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Middlesbrough and South Tyneside also saw high levels of claims.

On average, says the paper, about 18% of British households depend on housing benefit. Two-thirds of the claims are made by people of working age. And it's a benefit worth having, with an average payment of £81.03 a week, compared to the £64.30 Jobseeker’s Allowance. Some workless households receive five and six-figure sums, far more than the mortgage payments of many middle-income families. Nearly two-thirds of council tenants get all their rent paid by the taxpayer.

The Express concludes that

The massive handout – often to households where no one has a job – costs hard-working middle-income families £10billion a year, or £476 a year for every privately-owned home in Britain.

Now you'd think that this expensive benefit would be a major target for anti-fraud measures.

In fact Labour changed the system so that the benefit is paid to the tenant rather than the landlord. Result: some tenants don't pass it on. London - which has some of the biggest concentrations of housing benefit - also experiences considerable social housing fraud. But government hasn't implemented recommendations to change the law so as to facilitate repossessions and prosecutions. So it's still hard for councils to operate in this area.

And in Lambeth, use of voice recognition software suggested over 18% of claimants were benefit cheats. While the government's national figure for housing benefit fraud is £190m (a mere 1.2%), at 18% this would be £2.85bn for housing benefit fraud alone!

Government policy seems to be: don't rock the boat. It could throw up some inconvenient numbers, don't you know.