The Guardian on "spies" in the welfare war

"At 6.30am, the housing estates that fringe Tunbridge Wells are silent, the roads empty", writes Amelia Gentleman. "Colin Stevens drives into a cul-de-sac, searching for house number 18. There's a light on downstairs, and two cars outside. He notes the number plates, does a U-turn, parks the car around the corner and waits."

There follows an account of some initial surveillances.

Then she writes that the DWP recently announced a zero-tolerance approach that would involve the recruitment of "another 200 anti-fraud officers to sanction a further 10,000 fraudsters every year", and proposed introducing a "system for rewarding members of the public who provide information that results in significant recovery of public funds". The department promised an additional £425m funding to combat the problem over the next four years, she adds, hoping this will deliver a £1.4bn reduction in fraud and error by 2014/15.

This being The Guardian, we are told that the new government's more robust tone on benefit fraud has unsettled many poverty campaigners. George Osborne has estimated that £5bn a year is being lost in this way.

Tim Nichols, of the Child Poverty Action Group, says: "We've been worried by the government's language. There is more of a focus on benefit fraud in the Department for Work and Pensions' plan than there is on tax fraud and evasion in the Treasury plan, despite the fact that it is clearly a much smaller problem in terms of its cost. Recent figures show that we now have the lowest levels of benefit fraud that we've ever had."

The government's benefit fraud figures have been understated for years - as he doubtless knows.

After detailed discussion of surveillance tools and procedures, she questions in one case whether the work put in was worth the fraud it detected - five or six investigators involved in the case of a woman claiming £90 a week in disability living allowance. But clearly investigators need a level of proof which is likely to persuade offenders to plead guilty. The legal system just is not geared to the cost-effective sanctioning of huge numbers of low value cases.

But that is no argument for ignoring them. Many voters in the lower social groups who have low paid jobs are angry at the benefit fraud they see around them. Unchecked, it could grow even further.

"Encouraging people to shop their friends and neighbours is also uneasy territory", she writes.

You can't help thinking that if this wasn't an issue that touched only the country's more marginalised people, these methods might have prompted more of an outcry.

An outcry from whom? From The Guardian's Islington readers? Or from the benefit thieves' own neighbours?

After another right-on comparison with the amount of effort HMRC put into prosecuting "tax avoidance" (she means tax evasion, but then she is writing for The Guardian), she comments that "staff admit that a large proportion of people who commit fraud are not motivated by greed, but do it because they are struggling". More so than people in low paid jobs? There is no free money in the real world.

"Thirty to 40% say they did it because of a drug dependency, alcohol, debt, money for Christmas," Smith says. "If we impose an administrative penalty that will push them further into debt." Where they can, officials will just request repayments, and recommend that between £3 and £13.95 is deducted from the weekly benefits payment. When benefits are set so low, this will push them into poverty. Smith shrugs and looks sad.

His colleague Leslie (who prefers not to give a surname) says: "You will interview people who have done some work [without declaring it] because they needed some money for a specific purpose, to give their kids a good Christmas, to clear a bit of debt. They know they have done wrong. If they are really sorry then hopefully you can offer them a caution that doesn't require a sanction.

"There's pure greed at one end of the spectrum . . . but you have more empathy for some people when you interview them. Most people will admit that they have done something wrong. Some people will say I just can't live on £64 a week, I can't live on benefits. But that's what the law says they are entitled to receive."

How much would be enough?

Almost inevitably Shami Chakrabarti is wheeled on, to say that officials should stay out of people's sex lives unless there is a very strong justification. Of course. But what if they are getting money from taxpayers by telling lies about their sex lives? Maybe the government shouldn't use that as a criterion for giving out taxpayers' money. But it does.

As Lord Freud says:

It is vital that people who attempt to undertake fraud feel that it is pretty high-risk and that the likelihood of detection is pretty high and that when they are caught the punishment regime is pretty effective. If we don't do those things, I think we are on a very slippery slope

Then up rolls the Guardianista special pleading.

"Less than 1% of people on benefits commit fraud, and most of those who do so need a bit of extra cash to tide them over. The complexity and perverse disincentives in the benefits system often leave them with little choice," Geraldine Blake, chief executive of Community Links, a charity working with claimants in east London, says.

Excuse me: "less than 1%" have little choice, but somehow this doesn't apply to the other 99%? Oh please.

Katie Lane, benefits policy officer for Citizens Advice, says: "Of course fraud should not be tolerated, but it needs to be kept in perspective. The amount of money lost to the public purse through benefit fraud is a tiny fraction of the amount that goes unclaimed by people in real need who should be getting help."

Which doesn't change the absolute amount being lost to benefit theft.

Helen Longfield of Oxfam adds: "We know that most people want to work, that there aren't enough decent, secure jobs and that the government rarely puts an equivalent amount of effort into cracking down on tax evaders, which costs the country far more."

Oxfam? Are they saying benefit theft is justified because people are starving in the UK though a lack of "decent, secure" jobs? If not, what is she saying?

What Amelia Gentleman ignores is evidence at the general election that a lot of voters were angry at the benefit fraud they saw around them, and wanted it stamped on.

But we couldn't possibly have the opinions of ordinary voters sullying an effusion of Guardian politically correct posturing.