Darren Bound pleaded guilty to falsely claiming more than £5,000 in benefits.
A Chorley Council investigation officer contacted him about another claimant who was under investigation. Bound let it slip that the claimant was a work colleague ... but he himself was receiving benefits on the basis that he was unemployed.
Although he tried to cover his tracks, a quick call to his employer confirmed that he had been in work for four months. He was fined £195 and ordered to pay £100 costs and £15 victim surcharge. "Steps are being taken to recover the overpaid benefits in full."
With this light sentence South Ribble magistrates are insulting taxpayers.
In a separate case a Croston woman has pleaded guilty to falsely claiming more than £2,500 in housing and council tax benefit. She failed to tell Chorley Council that she was receiving Tax Credits. Council investigators found out about the deception following a benefit data matching exercise.
She was given a 12 month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £75 costs.
Another non-punishment.
And in this computer age, why do we still rely on claimants to tell paying agencies what money they are receiving from other parts of government when the data is already on government computers?
We lose £3.5bn in benefit fraud each year. The amounts are huge, the precaution is basic. Yet the government does not put these basic safeguards in place.
3 comments:
"And in this computer age, why do we still rely on claimants to tell paying agencies what money they are receiving from other parts of government when the data is already on government computers?"
Some shared computer facilities do exist - the local authority in my area can access a database that shows Income Support, Employment Support Allowance, Incapacity Benefit, Jobseeker's Allowance, Disability Living Allowance, some Bereavement benefits,and Working Tax Credits and Child Tax credits, though not the ubiquitous Child Benefit. It makes day-to-day assessment very much easier to do, and fraud and error easier to check...Once decision-makers have a legitimate reason to check.
My deep-cover vole at The Housing says that Local Government administered benefits assessors do have ready access to all this information - if they have a reason to go into the records, such as checking partial information about a change of circumstances received from teants, council tax payeres, or from other agencies.
What they are NOT allowed to do is to check benefits and tax levels on a regular basis unrelated to incoming information.
Assiduous decision-makers therefore can't set themselves diary dates to check the incomes of serial failure-to-reporter who incur overpayments once or twice or three times per year.
Such a routine would save taxpayers and benefits recipients alike from fraud and error [many overpaid benefits claimants are just hopelessly disorganised or stupid rather than active and knowing embezzlers]. But it is deemed to threaten their privacy by the data protection gurus. The same local authorities that are allowed to put electronic chips in your dustbins to see what you're throwing away preparatory to fines and Green-lectures can't check repeat-offenders' tax credits. This is the most common change of circumstance that is reported to town halls, and is triggered by increased earnings or new children or partners moving into the claimant's home.
So the answer is we rely on them reporting it becasue the State doesn't want the benefits decision-makers to play Big Brother.
Doh.
Thanks for this very interesting comment :)
I have pulled it out into a separate post as it deserves to be more prominent, and added some thoughts of my own.
Thank you - I'm flattered.
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