A reader writes that she reported an open and shut case of benefit fraud, but it hasn't been investigated.
Sadly, this isn't surprising. In February 2009 there were 5.8m working age benefits claimants - and the DWP have only around 3,000 investigators.
The DWP get around 800 referrals a day, say 4,500 a week. That is whittled down to 2,000 investigations a week by their more than 3,000 investigators. Most of these must be perfunctory.
3,000 investigators can't police 5.8m claimants effectively.
And if the case does get investigated? A Commons committee says about 200,000 cases of potential fraud were investigated in 2006/7 where the DWP considered there was a high possibility of prosecution - but only 7,483 of them were taken to court.
They simply don't have enough people. So effectively the government is conniving at widespread benefit fraud.
What should the government do? I'll blog on that tomorrow.
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