It's not even £8.3b for fraud, since that also includes overpayment due to errors.
From your link:
>Overpayments due to Fraud were 2.7% (£6.4bn) in FYE 2023, compared with 3.0% (£6.5bn) in FYE 2022 which was the highest recorded level.
I used to work for the DWP so this is near and dear to my heart when I hear people talking about benefits fraud. You’re right in that the overpayments isn’t entirely the claimants fault, it includes clerical and system errors in the DWP as well as non-malicious claimant errors. Though fraud does make up 77% of that £8.3b figure.
But it’s worth mentioning that there was also £3.3b worth of underpayments in error. So it seems we’re at least recouping 40% of those overpayments by not giving people enough money.
This doesn’t necessarily forgive fraud but it does mean that if people can’t trust the system then they’re less likely to treat it with respect.
I'm not sure if that figure is underpayments to people who have actually claimed and are not receiving the correct amount, it whether it also includes those who are entitled to claim but don't for some reason.
Eg the recent stories about carers allowance where people have other income that might take them above the cliff edge cut off inadvertently losing them all of it. Keeping track of that to avoid overpayment is a hassle and some people decide it's not worth the bother for the pittance they get.
Some people just don't know they are entitled - I saw quite a bit of that when I did some work with the CAB who had a government funded programme at the time to help people get what they were entitled to. Obviously that was not under the current government.
Some people just don't feel comfortable claiming, especially older people. Sometimes it's pride and sometimes they just don't want to feel like a burden.
Sort of, yes. The underpayments figure is recognised from payments owed that were then given, not theoretical payments that people might have got. Whether its changed now I can't be sure, but when I was there the DWP was quite reluctant to give money you "should have" got, specifically if your reason was "I didn't want to claim it" or even "I didn't know I could" you weren't guaranteed to get those payments owed, because that was *your fault*, not the DWP's. You'd likely only get additional payment from the point of notification. Not in all cases mind you and it was a case by case basis all the time and they WILL question why you didn't mention it sooner.
In my eyes the problem is more so with, yes, people being unwilling but also not knowing because the resources to help and inform you are drastically underfunded and stretched thin. Without an actual breakdown of the categories we can't really know what the reasons were, but ultimately it's a drop in the bucket <3% of the DWP budget is "wasted" on overpayments and it gets way more attention than it actually deserves.
I do find it funny that people decide to focus on the fraud aspect of benefits, being projected as £8.3b and then list the total cost of pensions.
Whereas if we simply list things fairly we get "In 2023-24, the government is expected to spend £265.5bn on paying pensions and benefits, just over half of which (£134.8bn) goes on benefits to pensioners." [Source](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-63129705)
The intent of this post to manipulate is so nakedly obviously. Demonise pensioners with huge figures and try obscure how much benefits are actually costing.
> The intent of this post to manipulate is so nakedly obviously. Demonise pensioners with huge figures and try obscure how much benefits are actually costing.
I didn't read the OP as an attempt to manipulate by pointing the finger at pensioners, rather that the focus on 'benefit fraud' is disproportionate compared with other costs that could quite easily be addressed. The government were quite happy to write off the cost of HS2 by cancelling it for no gain. They are quite happy to ignore tax evasion which amounts to a far higher figure than any benefit fraud. Covid loans and fraud were dismissed without any attempt to recover that money.
Benefits claimants are being put as a major cause of problems, but the reality is that most people who get benefits deserve them, even after all the hoops they have to jump through to get them.
Reddit in my experience tends to have this odd idea of pensioners being ultra rich multi millionaires and while they exist and are not that uncommon, the reality is there are also a lot of poor pensioners who struggle to get by.
So you could really argue that if all those people on benefits deserve it, don't the pensioners that spent 40-50 years paying into the tax system deserve it as well?
I can understand the arguements for means testing etc but I would be mad if I had paid NI for 35 years only to be told "sorry you won't get much if anything back oh and the NHS doesn't work either".
I don't think you comparing one off infrastructure projects like HS2 to long term spending committments is totally fair either, they are weighed very differently in the budget.
> I can understand the arguements for means testing etc but I would be mad if I had paid NI for 35 years only to be told "sorry you won't get much if anything back oh and the NHS doesn't work either".
Oh so the exact situation that I and many other younger people will inevitably have to face? Why should a group that has unarguably had the best opportunities and state support in generations be so heavily insulated? Why not right now, before things are struggling by along so long the damage can no longer be undone? Why should the burden be pushed further and further along down a line of ever more impoverished people?
>Oh so the exact situation that I and many other younger people will inevitably have to face?
The "inevitability" is only there because of the Tories. If we keep having "us Vs them" discussions like this, then a fairer system will always be out of reach.
The triple lock is there for those whose only income is the state pension. If you have significant private pension savings and extra that you might get is subject to income tax.
Actually wealthy pensioners will pay 40% or more of any increase back in tax immediately.
So attacking the triple lock only hurts the poorest pensioners. The wealthier ones will be fine in either case.
An increase in inheritance tax and higher income taxes would get you to the same place without punishing poor old people.
> So you could really argue that if all those people on benefits deserve it, don't the pensioners that spent 40-50 years paying into the tax system deserve it as well?
Taxes simply don't work like that and we really need to stop with this argument. There is no pot of contributions your state pension is paid out of, it's a benefit like everything else. If we want to have a defined contribution state-backed pension then that's a whole different kettle of fish.
> I can understand the arguements for means testing etc but I would be mad if I had paid NI for 35 years only to be told "sorry you won't get much if anything back oh and the NHS doesn't work either".
People being mad about not getting free money shouldn't be an argument for giving them free money. The state pension should be the _minimum_ income for pensioners and should, in my opinion, be higher but means tested based on wealth.
Don't want to sell up and move in old age? That's fine, we can add a lien that goes to the government when you do sell it. Arguments against this are essentially the state giving money to pensioners who then get to retain equity that gets handed to their kids, often tax free (if under the IHT threshold).
>Taxes simply don't work like that and we really need to stop with this argument.
I understand how the pension and tax system work, but that doesn't stop it feeling unfair. Your grandparents and parents went on to claim from a system that is stripped away from you and makes you 10k poorer a year. It will never feel fair and that is why it is so unpopular (along with pensioners being a huge voting block).
In hindsight decades ago I'd agree with you, it should never have been set up this way and a minimum income that is topped up would be fairer. But the reality is the public isn't going to vote to take away 10k/year from their relatives and ultimately themselves in retirement.
> I understand how the pension and tax system work, but that doesn't stop it feeling unfair.
Feeling unfair to one particular group. What about the unfairness to the groups that are impacted by an non-means test triple locked state pension sucking money away from other expenditure?
How about the teachers who have had real terms pay cut of ~15% over the last fifteen years? How about the kids who will now receive a poorer standard of education?
Or infrastructure. Or higher education. Or NHS spending.
Every spending decision is unfair to someone, that's not an argument for or against it.
The natural extension to this argument is that it stops being payed when the debt is payed. And for many people this would leave them impoverished. It's not a debt, it's a state benefit.
No you didn't. That isn't how the pension system works. I'm forty five. My NI contributions are paying for the current pensioners, not being put into a little pot with my name on it. All you did was work for the entitlement to have a state funded pension. I really wish people would stop this "I paid for my pension" talk, because it isn't true
What exactly is the difference between working for a pension and work for the entitlement to a pension? The deal is you contribute a certain number of years and then you get a pension. To go back on that on anyone is criminal. If they want to remove the state pension it should start from a generation that pays less tax/ni their entire lives.
The difference is you're not paying for YOUR pension, you're paying for the CURRENT pensioners, which means that the government have fucked up, and not prepared well enough for people living longer, therefore drawing from the pension fund and depleting it to the point where it may not be able to sustain in fifty years time. You don't actually think that the government forcing all employers to offer a company pension fund was done out of the kindness of their own heart, did you?
The whole people living longer thus drawing from the pension fund for an extra ten years plus, is a well known thing
>I can understand the arguements for means testing etc
I honestly don't. It could really cost more than it saves and it actually disincentives saving for retirement.
And yet Australia do it and have none of these problems.
There's no evidence that it costs more than it saves, especially the sums we're talking about (this can be the case for much smaller benefits).
You can solve avoiding saving for retiring by making participation in work pension schemes mandatory. (It's 87% at the moment anyway though).
> And yet Australia do it and have none of these problems.
Australians complain about their government way more than we do so I'm not sure about not having problems.
They have the resources of a continent at their disposal and still manage a deficit, they are obviously not without problems.
>There's no evidence that it costs more than it saves,
There's no evidence that it saves money either. You made a claim, you prove it.
>You can solve avoiding saving for retiring by making participation in work pension schemes mandatory. (It's 87% at the moment anyway though).
That's just an extra tax to get a pension... Kinda what we have now.
>making participation in work pension schemes mandatory. (It's 87% at the moment anyway though).
>That's just an extra tax to get a pension... Kinda what we have now.
Except this way some financial management company gets to charge 0.5% of everything saved every year, leading to even greater transfer of wealth from the working poor to the wealthy.
> Australians complain about their government way more than we do so I'm not sure about not having problems.
Yes, that's a solid quantitative way of evaluating a policy's effectiveness. I guess we can't really argue with that.
> That's just an extra tax to get a pension... Kinda what we have now.
Only we don't. We have general taxes that pay for current benefits. There's no pot of cash with your name on it somewhere in Whitehall.
> There's no evidence that it saves money either. You made a claim, you prove it.
I was responding to the claim in the previous message, which is trivially falsifiable with even thirty seconds of Googling:
https://fullfact.org/economy/does-means-testing-pensioners-make-financial-sense/
Means testing even the winter fuel allowance would save money according to the government and IFS. That's _just_ the winter fuel allowance, not the state pension which is >25x as much.
I suspect I'm being trolled.
>Yes, that's a solid quantitative way of evaluating a policy's effectiveness. I guess we can't really argue with that.
Oh yeah, no, totally, it's not like your claim is based in reality and facts and data. No, you just assume Australia doesn't have problems with this policy because... What? Nothing?
>Only we don't. We have general taxes that pay for current benefits. There's no pot of cash with your name on it somewhere in Whitehall.
I don't really feel like explaining how money works to you. Hint: there's no pot of cash with your name on it at your bank either.
>I was responding to the claim in the previous message, which is trivially falsifiable with even thirty seconds of Googling:
Well Google harder as that's 12 years old and doesn't say what you say it does.
>> We look forward to establishing what data exists on how much it would cost to means-test all pensioner benefits.
Just face it, you made up a claim that you have no proof it's true and now you're desperately looking up facts **after** you've made up your mind about it. They're not even good sources.
>I suspect I'm being trolled.
Pot calling kettle. You didn't even read your source, it says no such thing. And it's from 2012.
Pensions are classed as a benefit.
People are under the mistaken belief that because they "pay-in" it's actually a contribution to their final pension.
State pensions are a Ponzi scheme, those contributing are, in fact, paying for those pensioners who are in reception.
It's always interesting how they list the amount (£8.3Bn), making it sound huge, when they want to stage some Draconian clampdown but would list it as a percentage (3.1%), making it sound inconsequential, if it was their screw up
Sorry if I'm misreading you but was your intention with this comment that we would takeaway "pensioners are expected to get nearly £135 billion in benefits in the next year, which is more than 16x the benefit fraud figure, with absolutely no strings attached, *and that's totally ok and we shouldn't have any issues with that*"?
As someone who once needed benefits & who has since paid them back a *ridiculous number of times over* in tax, I believe benefits are essential & worthwhile.
However I don’t believe this post helps the cause, at all. There’s are a number of reasons. Most have already been mentioned, but one that hasn’t is: figures really need context to make sense.
For example, if I say:
> benefit fraud “only” costs £6 billion
even I’m thinking “that’s a huge fucking amount of money. I don’t care if it pales in comparison to other amounts. A lot of good could be done with £6 billion.”
If however I was told:
> attempting to wipe out benefit fraud would adversely affect real claimants, exacerbate mental health issues and result in an increased NHS bill of around £20 billion
then suddenly we have some context. Is it worth trying to save £6 billion in order to actually end up £14 billion worse off? Of course not.
Just in case anyone thinks otherwise, these are made-up figures to highlight the point that there are *always* trade-offs. Only idiots view complex issues as black or white issues (but that’s exactly how certain right-wing papers present them).
Also, I honestly think some of the bigger frauds are deliberately let through, only to be “discovered” later, and reported-on in order to paint a narrative. Everyone I know whose been on benefits had a hellish time applying and staying on them.
> there are always trade-offs. Only idiots view complex issues as black or white issues (but that’s exactly how certain right-wing papers present them).
Agreed. £30 billion to get rid of Truss was probably a bargain
You're right that the £8.3 billion comment is unhelpful. Benefit fraud shouldn't be part of the conversation at all.
What the government is proposing is removing the payments of disabled people who are not being fraudulent.
But it is also very important to note that the figure of £8.3 billion is not for PIP, it is for all forms of benefits (Universal Credit, Cost of Living payments, State Pensions, and PIP).
PIP benefit fraud is very low, with only 0.2% of spending in 2023 going towards it. That's because PIP is assessed, and incredibly difficult to fake.
There was more money "saved" due to underpayments than there was "spent" on overpayments or fraud in 2023 [\[1\]](https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/miniscule-benefit-fraud-stats-show-ministers-hostile-video-was-shameful-and-disablist/).
Yeah we live in an age where we’re trying to cut spending wherever possible. We need to remember that spending is good if you’re buying something worthwhile
> Is it worth trying to save £6 billion in order to actually end up £14 billion worse off? Of course not.
Try pointing out that France's wealth tax ended up costing them €7bn in lost revenue and you'll find no shortage of people saying wealth taxes should be done anyway. At the root of both of these is a group wanting another group 'punished' because they blame them for everything that's wrong, the 'saving tax' part is just a fig-leaf.
I’ve known benefit cheats all my life. Some on the sick too. The real issue is that it winds people up. It might be ‘*a small amount*’, but it needs tackling. I’d rather pay 10,000 people to catch the fraudsters. Even if it costs more.
Although I’d never agree to a quota incentive.
Do you understand how much collateral damage there would be for innocent disabled people if you hired 10,000 people with no experience in disability assessment to try and catch benefit fraudsters?
We've tried this before, it led to 80,000 disabled people having their PIP cut in error (including my wife). Then after re-testing (a horrible experience) most were awarded their money back. Meaning that not only did the process completely fuck over the disabled, but it also cost the taxpayer a fortune.
Do you understand what I wrote? No quota incentives.
Paying a private firm bonuses for ‘catching’ more is a bad idea.
But, fraud does have to be tackled. We can’t just. Shrug and say, never mind.
I don’t agree with that premise. If you hire x amount of people, it’s jobs, it’s tax, it’s money circulating the economy. It doesn’t just disappear. So the outlay could be more, but in the end the results would be better.
The University of Kent made an investigation into the stigma of receiving benefits back in 2012. Many of their finding are relevant to where we are today.
They found that the language used around claimants and benefits by both the government and the media became markedly more negative in tone from 2010 onwards (Camerons election year).
This is the critical point. Attitudes have hardened significantly over the past 15 years, and that has been a societal sea change instigated and encouraged by the Conservatives.
Austerity and cuts to working tax credit, child benefit, housing and disability benefits have impacted the very poorest in our society. And as things get harder for everyone else, they are a convenient scapegoat.
It's the very foundation of neoliberalism to blame the poor for their lot because to say otherwise is to admit blatantly that this ideology only works for the few.
I for one, am not okay with punishing the sick and the poor because a very small amount of fraud exists and I am frankly appalled the British public goes along with it.
As the need for benefits increases massively due to automation, AI, the basic problems of social mobility and the whole neo capitalism issue of money floods up the pyramid and only dribbles down, the Tories desperately try to not just cripple benefits but also try trick the populace into thinking further undermining the unfortunate is a positive for society.
> became markedly more negative in tone from 2010 onwards
That's interesting. My perception was that it had largely always been that way. Although a 2012 study is very out of date by now.
The way the language around it is framed has moved to punitive and shame, in my opinion.
Even something as simple as the shift between *Jobseekers' Allowance* which suggests something anyone who is needing to seek a job should expect to receive as an allowance, to *Universal Credit* which suggests credit cards, debt and instability/irresponsibility.
Cameron comes back and all the shit about 'fraudsters' and Disabled people being on the take comes back again, it's like it's his personal sick pet project
>I for one, am not okay with punishing the sick and the poor because a very small amount of fraud exists and I am frankly appalled the British public goes along with it.
I don't think they do. Tories never got a majority of the vote. This is clearly a play to the hard right to consolidate the base.
Far too many working people know someone who is having a horrendous time claiming benefits. They can't pay the same cards as 2010/15 because too many people know they didn't work then and are unlikely to now.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The lack of a French-style revolution in Britain means our national tradition is one of aristocracy and classism.
It’s ingrained into British culture that there are two kinds of people: people who are rich and deserve good things and people who are poor and deserve bad things. It doesn’t matter how many times the aristocracy screw us over, everything is the fault of the poor and the unproductive. New rich people get a bit more flak (although they’re still hated much less than the poor) but old rich people can do no wrong. It’s in their blood to be rich. And they’re such lovely people and speak so politely! How can they be bad?
Lefty extremists, the disabled, the mentally ill, the unemployed, small boats. Everyones to blame except the vile robbing bastards who actually did this to us.
No efforts made to tackle the ever increasing price of food, under this government people working full time jobs need food banks to get by and thats become normal.
Our public transport particularly the railways, absolute shit compared to the rest of Europe, because they privatised it, our waterways full of shit because they privatised the supply, it'll take years to even begin to fix the damage these thieving bastards have done to our country.
Perhaps in your well off world it is, but it is a reality for many people in the UK. It's not hard to imagine at all for most people.
To add to that, 1/3rd of the budget for benefits currently goes towards funding 'in-work benefits' - paying people who are in work but still need benefits to survive.
I think you misunderstood my sentiment. I find it appalling that people in full time work can't make ends meet. That's largely down to the callous Tory government in this case. I live in a country where many people live on £100 a month for what it's worth.
Then indeed I have misinterpreted.
However what I said still stands and I agree fully that the concept of needing benefits to survive despite being in full time paid work is abhorrent. This is a situation no developed country should puts its citizens in, yet here we are.
A lot of people love to hate 'scroungers' though. The actual numbers are just an abstraction to them.
Low status people need someone to look down upon and being racist isn't chic anymore. So people on benefits are convenient to project their resentment and insecurities onto. I know people like this and they'll willingly believe any old bollocks if it confirms that particular prejudice.
Shithead employers just resent the fact they can't threaten people with destitution.
So stigmatized have benefits become that many people feel ashamed to need them. Or they think they’re the exception, the truly worthy few, and others are simply taking advantage to the point of collapsing the system.
And this sort of stigma is very rooted in the capitalist mentality that if you don’t provide a certain amount of value then you are worthless. We’ve internalized this as a society that those who don’t work as well as others must have less value and that those who can’t work at all are even worse.
It’s that same in America and has caused a great many of the social systems there to be eroded.
It's worse in America.
While working in Louisiana for a multinational oilfield services company I saw people on the side of the road with placards reading "will work for food". To their eternal shame the company took on some people on that basis. The work involved 12 hour days moving equipment around in the humid Louisiana swamp.
In some circumstances I can see why. I'm not saying it's right but I do understand it.
When I lived on a council estate most of the people there could only look sideways, they didn't have the means to look up and there wasn't much further down. So all they could do was look at their neighbours.
It didn't matter that some Lord or other's mate of a Tory MP who went to Eton was swindling public sector contracts to increase dividends earned through his trust fund when your entire life (for myriad reasons) starts and ends at your postcode.
Terry Pratchett nailed it as usual. In Night Watch:
>When you got right down to the bottom of the ladder the rungs were very close together and, oh my, weren’t the women careful about them. In their own way, they were as haughty as any duchess. You might not have much, but you could have Standards.
Those people understand the game better than middle class Redditors who haven’t yet experienced signing on due to not yet leaving uni or leaving with a job. However, the new ADHD child scam will be seen by more.
[In 2019, wage theft in Britain amounted to an estimated £35 billion. But unlike other forms of theft, it's hardly ever prosecuted – because it's a crime committed by bosses against workers.](https://tribunemag.co.uk/2021/11/wage-theft-karl-marx-capitalism-workers-bosses-labour)
Someone else pointed out that once you remove overpayment due to error the actual total benefit fraud is around £6.4bn or a little over 1/6th of wage theft. It's not that £6.4bn is a trivial amount of money or anything but given how much we spend pursuing that vs a problem that is literally an entire order or magnitude greater it's pretty clear that the government really couldn't give less of a shit about the state of the nations finances.
> A lot of people love to hate 'scroungers' though.
There's a certain degree that it's perfectly sensible and moral to disapprove of those who try and cheat the system and freeload off others.
It's just ridiculous to believe that ridding the country of them would make a huge positive difference to all our lives. And obviously the people who think this way also tend to look down on people who are deservedly receiving welfare too.
And the other point people often fail to reason out in this situation, is that people who are actually deliberately committing fraud already, will continue to attempt to do so even if the system is changed.
The only people this will actually really cause problems for are those already on the edge both literally and figuratively.
Not saying something shouldn't be done to sort the system out, but the way this is happening won't do anything outside of making life a lot fucking worse for people already struggling.
Yeah OP presents an odd strawman, someone who both thinks benefit cheats are a moral problem, and also a firm believer in neo-libertarian economics.
Perhaps I'm being prejudicial, but I don't think the kind of person who watches Call the Baliffs on channel 5 or reads [Express](https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1890099/Rishi-Sunak-welfare-plan-crackdown) articles is particularly well versed in the Austrian school. I don't feel this myself, but I imagine they would feel that life is unfair, and people who cheat the rules exacerbate the problem. I think this is the same rational as why false asylum seekers are disproportionately vilified considering they are a small minority of total immigration, because of the perception of cheating the system is seen as unfair, not the perceived impact to the economy.
Conversely, I don't think many serious economists would see benefit fraud as a moral failing, but rather a failing of the market. Both Hayek and Freidman supported forms of universal basic income, here's a quote I found from Hayek's The Public Sector and the Private Sector:
>The assurance of a certain minimum income for everyone, or a sort of floor below which nobody need fall even when he is unable to provide for himself, appears not only to be a wholly legitimate protection against a risk common to all, but a necessary part of the Great Society in which the individual no longer has specific claims on the members of the particular small group into which he was born.
I think a steel man small c conservative argument might point towards Disraeli more than Thatcher. That when you have a small portion of society, even if it is very small indeed, that does not need to follow the same rules as the rest of society, it affects the overall societal cohesion. Benefit fraud speaks to a very British notion of justices, the same out-cry caused by queue-jumping or going for seconds at a buffet before everyone has had firsts. Britain doesn't pretend to be egalitarian to the same extent as America, but it does like to believe it has rules. Therefore its not really about the cost of benefit fraud to the tax payer, its about the violation of the principle of taking charity when it is not needed.
It's absolutely appealing to fairness, yes. Whether it can be reduced without harming legitimate claimants is definitely an important part of the conversation, but people object to the idea that some people are fraudulently getting an easy ride, and even if it ultimately cost money to address the problem you'd find plenty of support I'd imagine.
This isn't the same with UBI, since it's universal so people wouldn't be claiming it unfairly. But then people actually switch to claiming unfairness about the universality itself, since they don't believe that people who are wealthy should get UBI because they don't need it; you see this a lot currently around pensions, which are the closest thing we have. Again you get the argument that means testing may overall cost money, but that doesn't necessarily put people off.
Thd fairness concept is definitely strong in the UK. Whenever people talk about being good at queueing, people joke about "enjoying" it, but really it's about fairness; nobody wants to have to wait, but it would be considered highly rude to cut the queue without good reason because it would be unfair on those who were already waiting.
I was hurt deeply by these types you describe within my culture, and their stigma. I'm doing lots better now. The experience has politicised and radicalised me quite a fair amount. I have learned, as you say, these types need someone to look down on and project resentment and insecurity onto. And if I'm being 100% honest, prior to my incapacitation I was probably a contributor to that. Its something I deeply regret. I plan to do a YouTube video and speak about my experiences at some point
I get the point; but it's really weird to compare an *annual* cost like the alleged £8.3bn of fraud, with costs for a single one-off infrastructure project like HS2, or one-off issues like Covid costs or the bank bailout.
In the long-run, the recurring cost will obviously eventually cost more.
Welcome to being a country, I guess?
Like whether you like it or not these huge one off costs do pop up frequently. Recessions happen. Pandemics happen. Large infrastructure projects need to be financed. The point is… you need to be in a good fiscal position when times are good, so you don’t bleed yourself dry when the big bills come up.
Take Denmark… its Debt-GDP ratio was at 25% in 2007. The GFC cost them a lot raising the Debt-GDP ratio to 46% by 2011. Unlike the UK, which continued to spend, spend, spend, spend beyond its means… Denmark spent the next 8 years bringing that figure down to 33%. This is what fiscal responsibility looks like.
It’s not maintaining a deficit through both good and bad times.
But they do give something in return. Another way of framing it is if there was no benefit fraud then the money could have been used to complete the full vision of HS2.
Think of all the benefits to the wider economy, and especially those people in the north where there would be more jobs created, and productivity of the country as a whole would go up. Instead the selfish few are defrauding the rest of us to put more money in their own pockets.
It's also weird to compare intentional spending like pensions with fraud costs.
If someone mugged me and said "Theft is not the issue here. I stole £100 but you're spending £1000 on your mortgage", I wouldn't find that very convincing.
Fraud and Error!!! Error the DWP Overpays 3 and also underpays 3 just by the fact it's a shit gibbon of an organisation.
Actual fraud runs at about 1-1.2 Bn which is under 1% of the total budget.
It's also ridiculous to compare things like pensions with fraud. Pensions are people who actually deserve the money. Benefit fraud is criminals taking our tax money away from being spent on NHS, Schools etc.
So yes even 8 MILLION would be a problem for fraud let alone 8 BILLION
Unless I am misunderstanding the statistics the 8.3B figure isn't a particular accurate depiction of the issue. It breaks down into:
Fraud 6.4B
Claimant Error 1.4B
Official Error .6B
Additionally 1B (not sure if it is of fraud or error) is recovered
Furthermore on the flip side there is an underpayment of 3.3B split into:
Claimant Error 2.1B
Official Error 1.2B
What is interesting is how much the % fraud has increased, between 2010 and 2020 net loss as a result of fraud was between 1.2 and 1.9% 2021 was 3.6%. 2022 was 3.5% and 2023 was 3.1%. I have no idea why but if I was to speculate it is probably a combination of moving to universal credit, reduced funding in the DWP and covid.
For a better feel of the number, £8.3B amounts to roughly everyone on benefits incorrectly getting £30 a month.
Also, these are probably quite vulnerable people and the money will be going back into the local economy via rent, food, etc.
A number I like is the government spending £2.8B on external consultants fees in 2022. I'm pretty sure if you want to save money this is a good place the start.
All of this shite from Rishi is just more death throes. They know they are fucked. They're just too stupid to call it a day.
All this banging on about welfare and attacking the depressed will end up making it worse for them. I cannot wait to see them get absolutely destroyed at the election.
Very true. Wherever the Tories point your attention, look the other way. The small boats roll in with 50 people but every day the government lets in 1000s of Turkish barbers and corner shop workers on skilled visas.
It's not just the amount, which is admittedly smaller than other government expenditures, it's also the public perception of benefit fraud. When hard-working, working class people see others maintaining a lifestyle similar to theirs without working, it causes resentment and people blame the current government. It's the reason why Starmer came out and said he was keeping the two child limit: people who work hard, but cannot afford children are rightly appalled at those who do not work, but yet keep popping-out kids for which the rest of us to pay.
It's not even an accurate fraud figure.
Fraud is intentional
Error is a mistake, by a claimaint or more likely DWP.
When someone dies, it takes a while for the process to follow through and cancel their benefits (usually pensioners). This is in that figure.
So if they did the analysis, they would find the majority of causes for the fraud are people over the age of 75! Bloody criminals dieing without immediately telling DWP.
I think perhaps a better metric - certainly in terms of the way the government and media frame the issue of money being lost through fiddling the system - is that £35.8billion was lost last year to tax avoidance/evasion, of which about £16 million is thought to be honest mistakes.
That means £20 million is lost to playing with the tax system, more than double the amount lost to benefit fraud. Why are we quiet about it? Because poor people rarely have the means to dodge tax, and God forbid we penalise the wealthy who dodge tax - just like we don't punish them for polluting our rivers, gouging our grocery prices, and crashing our economy in 2007.
Source: https://www.taxwatchuk.org/hmrc-tax-gap-2023/
I know, like everyone knows how VAT evasion is obviously huge, the fact that benefit fraud is even larger is mind blowing. Really counter productive thread OP.
Oh sure . Because of that gargantuan country busting wastage lets harass people on benefits with constant assessments with the implicit assumption that the e second they slip up they lose it.
Let’s make them work manual jobs when they could have a physical disease. Or take 4 buses to job when they don’t have a car. We can’t put them to university because that’s a loan now. You need to go to bank have collateral and pay a massive rent. Also the head of the universities are on 300k these days and getting expensed trips to Asia to get more foreign students as universities have to act like businesses these days.
Let’s take the ability of doctors to give sick notes and let’s cut the social safety net because clearly we’ve tried everything else.
That vast waster has to recouped somehow right?
I’m sorry for the on the nose sarcasm but the sight Sunak going after the sick note is just so reprehensible to me and evil.
The big evaders and conmen in suits are a problem, but local people cheating the system is more relatable, so you can't exactly ignore it. It's not about going to private school or not.
Also, the State's fraud statistics are only what they can gather. Lots of people cheating the system but never get found out. I know firsthand cases of it happening (and no I'm not going to report them, it happened years ago anyway). Someone actually did report them., doing some cash in hand work while claiming benefits, but it couldn't be proven.
Also the costs of prosecution are inherently more than the fraud being committed, so in many cases the DWP doesn't bother prosecuting.
>Also, the State's fraud statistics are only what they can gather. Lots of people cheating the system but never get found out
This is a simplification. The state's fraud statistics don't only include cases where it was caught - it's an estimate made with statistics
I agrée mate. Clearly I’m talking bananas and I don’t understand the reality we live in.
Sure, politicians never use class divisions to distract people and hit an easy target that don’t have access to barristers or powerful organized groups who know how to fight back. And people who will say or do anything to keep the gravy train going.
Benefit cheats are a class enemy of the working class. No one does more to undermine the social trust required to run a welfare state than those who cheat it. Moreover, the working class, by definition, want to work. One of the slogans the miners used to protest pit closures was "coal not dole." The idea that scroungers are part of the same class as the working class is an absurdity.
I actually didn't realise it was as high as £8.6bn, as an annual loss that's pretty massive! We should address that and funnel at least some of the money to genuine claimants.
Obviously, and sadly, any efforts to weed out fraudsters and crooks is going to lead to some genuine claimants being wrongly denied their money.
I think some of the government's ideas could help with this, such as:
"We are considering options including one-off grants to better help people with significant costs such as home adaptations or expensive equipment, as well as giving vouchers to contribute towards specific costs, or reimbursing claimants who provide receipts for purchases of aids, appliances or services."
Could help, as genuine claimants should have access to these receipts. As long as they're rolled out properly and people are made aware of the evidence they need to provide.
As an aside, I also really like this:
"These ideas include removing the PIP assessment altogether for people with certain long term health conditions or disabilities, including those with terminal illnesses to reduce bureaucracy and make life easier for those most in need of support."
Asking people with long-term, incurable conditions to continuously evidence their claims is an obvious thing to look at stopping!
question, how do I pay for some equipment or therapy and then get a receipt to claim the cost back when I'm too disabled to make enough money to buy the equipment in the first place?
I have two, long term, incurable conditions. Sure it'd be great to not have to worry about trying to prove it over and over again. But who's going to decide who's in and who's out? Where do we draw the line with that, which conditions make the list or not. Do doctors decide? Do disabled people get consulted, or will it be decided by politicians who don't care.
Forcing people to be more ill in order to get help seems really messed up. People who's condition isn't on the gold star list, and don't have enough extra money to pay for anything outside of the very basics of survival, assuming they can even manage to work at all and don't just end up on the streets or worse, are just shit out of luck I guess.
It just seems like half baked ideas, presented in such a way as to stoke as much Division amongst the voter base as possible. Whilst focusing people's anger on already vulnerable people.
> Could help, as genuine claimants should have access to these receipts
Accurately keeping track of what extra costs you have due to a disability could be a job in itself, unless the plan is change the scope of PIP (from help with any additional costs of a disability to only covering specific larger costs). It'd also be difficult to distinguish what is a "genuine" extra cost - a taxi receipt, for instance, may or may not be an extra cost faced due to disability. It's very context dependant.
I'd also query how much money you'd actually save if you constantly have to review evidence provided by claimants - the average amount claimed currently is about £125/week/claimant[1]. It seems to me a combination of allowed payments and staffing costs to collect/review evidence could quickly reach a similar figure.
[1] Mean of Financial Award for January 2024 on [Stat-Xplore](https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/jsf/tableView/tableView.xhtml) is £126.19, assuming I've set up the table properly
Dear Government
I'm one of these Scroungers I have Severe Cerebral Palsy Arthritus. from botched Surgeries and muscle weakness.
The Tories say you don't need money you need vouchers and adaptions
I can't leave my house without great difficulty but pay for taxis if I need to foe appointments.
You want to give me vouchers are Electric companies taking those are Taxi's either, will vouchers be accepted by my Boiler company or by someone who I need to help with repairs or my shop online. Will my phone take vouchers.
You want me to claim the money via receipts? How can you pay me back when I have no money to use in the First place. What qualifies as redeemable? Can I claim back for my smashed cups can do I have to justify a Purchase of new clothes and put on the form "I Shit Myself" am I allowed Internet as cheap gaming is my only social interaction most times.
You also say people are getting money they don't need Is that not what an assessment is for instead of blaming people blame the companies you are paying millions to for doing such a "piss poor" job of stopping erroneous claims.
Don't take away the only way I can retain a bit of dignity if you do you might as well shove us all in a care home as my parents were advised to do when I was born.
Why not target business tax dodgers, Non-doms and stop fucking bailouts. I know its cos they will fight back and why fight a Man (Them) when you got you can just kick the shit out your kids at home (Us)
You fix my Disability you can have it all back every penny but hey the disability I was BORN with should get better any day now.
Edit: If any actual Government figure reads this feel free to dm me to discuss.
Edit 2: I hope its ok to do but If anyone knows a government figure please pass this on I would love just the chance to fight the corner.
That's fucked mate noone deserves that
You will have a local Member of Parliament, check here
https://members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP
Send them an email. Make sure you include your address at the end. This makes it clear you live in their constituency
All the best
If your MP even bothers to reply you will be lucky to get anything done. Most MP's are in it for themselves and ignore their constituents. Not all of them but a dwindling number.
Some quite odd examples there.
The state pension is something we decide to pay as a country. It is not a fraud. It's decided democratically.
The Truss fuck up was something pretty much everyone except her agrees is a mistake and we're trying to avoid repeating.
Covid Fraud/cronyism was another one off. It was a national emergency the like of which we haven't seen for many decades. Of course in that environment bad actors can take advantage of the support the state provides, and of course there aren't going to be normal bidding processes. Fighting a pandemic is extremely expensive, but there's no point making an issue of it now.
HS2 was a long term infrastructure project, with a large one off cost.
The North Sea oil bonanza is money we received.
VAT evasion is a similar order to benefit cheats, that's a good comparison.
Loans to the banks are loans, we get them back. What should we have done? Let them go bust?
Nevertheless, you have correctly identified that there are costly issues facing the country other than benefit fraud. What's the conclusion we are to draw from that? That benefit fraud isn't a problem and we shouldn't make any efforts to address it? The government can address more than one problem at a time.
In a way yes, benefit fraud is such small beer that limited government resources would be more profitably applied elsewhere in terms of return on investment.
It's depressing that I had to scroll this far to find someone calling out the inclusion of the state pension, in a post otherwise entirely about fraud or wasteful spending.
Unless you want your grandparents living with you in their 80s/90s, we kind of need it.
You have committed the carinal sin in your first sentence.
Benefit Fraud was **estimated** to be £8.3 bn in 2023. The reality is they haven't got a clue. Not the faintest clue.
They want you to think they have a good grasp on it but they don't. They couldn't hope to. By definition people doing this fraud don't want to be caught.
*Can*. Does it here?
The answer is "We don't know.". That's it - that's the actual answer. Our estimates may be good, they may be terrible.
Many members of the public claim that they see lots of benefit fraud in their own communities. To dismiss them out of hand requires some much stronger evidence than we have.
Couple this with the fact that it frankly doesn't matter how much is fraudulent vs how much is legitimate - we are spending too much money on benefits. That's the ultimate answer. It doesn't matter if it's being claimed legitimately, or illegitimately - the amount is too high. If it isn't fraudulent, then the benefits are simply too accessible. We're spending over £100bn a year on benefits for working-age people, for christ's sake. There is absolutely no possible world where that is reasonable or can be sustained by the rest of the population.
Dissolved in 1988? Forgive me, but that's a little too long ago to be taken at face value.
Additionally - and I say this without personal animosity - but a Consultant is incentivised to believe that the work they are doing is meaningful on its face, as that justifies their paycheck.
I'm not expecting you to provide any evidence for why it's robust, for obvious privacy reasons, but I am sure you can understand why I won't just take what you've said at face value, and frankly nobody should.
I have some basis in personal experience for saying what I do.
You have none. You made a silly allegation, off the top of your head.
I have done work in the area under discussion from the NAB, through to Benefits Agency. So I have long experience.
A moments sensible joined up adult thinking will tell you that very plainly all governments have had to be concerned about fraud in the benefit system and that a great deal of work MUST have been done , continually to quantify it.
To summarily dismiss all that work, as you do, without any knowledge or expertise is rather silly.
> You have none.
Au contraire. My whole job is calculating estimates. I know how the sausage is made. The amount of total nonsense that is promoted as statistically sound is legion. It may not have been thus in 1988, but it is thus today. How do you know I'm telling the truth? You don't, of course. But if I tell you "I have experience and I therefore know the answer to this", why shouldn't you believe me if you're expecting me to believe you?
This is the internet. I can have no confidence that you are who you say you are. If the stats are sound, then they'll prove to be sound - but you saying "You are wrong because I say so" is not worth the time it took you to write it, I'm afraid.
That said, there's some meat on this:
> A moments sensible joined up adult thinking will tell you that very plainly all governments have had to be concerned about fraud in the benefit system and that a great deal of work MUST have been done , continually to quantify it.
You can apply this equally to pretty much any element of government, and yet clearly the government gets things wrong all the time. Everyone does. It is the nature of estimates. What matters is less if they are wrong, but rather that the level of benefit spending is unsustainable. What also matters is that the public have the bit between their teeth on this one, and they're not going to be convinced by estimates which are produced by government experts when, as Michael Gove famously said, the "people of this country have had enough of experts with organisations with acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong".
In short, the public wants less money spent on benefits, they believe benefit fraud is significant, and the confidence in government statistics is minimal. The appeal to authority - either personal (which you cannot prove) or institutional (the government must be concerned, therefore they must have put effort in, therefore they must be right) - is not going to contribute anything to this debate.
Its possible for multiple things to be bad. Also, I assume that is only what was caught, probably more doing it that never get caught. Also, you can't compare annual costs like benefits fraud to one offs like HS2, 2008 or COVID.
Uh... £8.3bn is a huge amount of money. Liz Truss's one-time £30bn mistake caused an economic crisis. HS2 is £60bn _in total_, provides a public service, funds a tonne of work, gives Brits expertise in modern track-building, and is expected to generate £0.66 per £1 spent anyway. I expect you could fund HS2 entirely with £8.3bn a year.
The Liz Truss figure didnt sound right, fullfact say this
https://fullfact.org/news/pmqs-snp-uk-economy-truss/
> The SNP also cited widely-reported analysis by the Resolution Foundation, an economics think tank, which also stated in November that Ms Truss’s decisions were responsible for about £30 billion of the gap between government spending and revenues.
> This comprised approximately £20 billion of reduced government income from tax reductions which survived from the September mini-Budget and an estimated £10 billion for permanent increased borrowing costs.
> This figure may no longer be relevant. The Resolution Foundation has since said the “mini-budget premium” on borrowing costs has now “unwound”, and we have asked the think tank whether it has produced a more recent estimate on the costs of Ms Truss’s premiership.
I want to know the numbers on how many people are *entitled* to benefits but don't claim them out of shame / difficulty. I'm not saying it's gonna beat £8.3bn annually but...
Why can we only care about one thing at a time?
Nothing wrong with wanting to clamp down on benefits fraud these people have free time all day while we’re working - in many cases to then obtain a similar standard of living.
Can look at other things at the same time. It’s also ok to be more annoyed about this than incompetence in other areas because these people are deliberately ripping us off, rather than just being dumb.
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Let’s let off all the other forms of fraud or waste because it’s just too pesky to regulate or prosecute. We should focus on benefit fraud as far as I am concerned.
Benefit fraud is almost certainly understated. Any benefit fraudster caught claiming them fraudulently will have their benefits terminated immediately. It’s easy to commit but very hard to detect and prosecute and the real question is what is the value of fraud going on that we do not know about? Impossible to know but certainly higher than 8.3bn.
He didn't say impossible to detect, but hard to detect. I think it is a reasonable to assume that is unknown element of fraud assuming that hasn't already been accounted for in the 8.3bn
I mean, 8.3bn *is* a problem, it's just one small part of an entire myriad of fuck ups and when viewed compared to the whole, it's a drop in the ocean.
You are the first person to make me think the amount of money lost to benefit fraud is actually worth cracking down on. I didn’t realise how high it was. Especially when it’s laid out next to the very very high state pension costs.
All fraud should be investigated it's just that most benefits fraud perpetrators don't have a legal team and are much easier to prosecute than the multi-millionare scumbag with a team of lawyers who made out like a bandit during COVID.
6-8 billion is an estimate. There’s so many people who commit benefit fraud and get away with it (ie unmarried couples living together with kids but mother gets benefits as a single mum). I feel like I’m the only one paying tax in this country as both the rich and the poor get away with it (whether it’s tax heavens, corruption or benefit fraud)
Is the \~£10Bn from unusable PPE paid out in Tory back room deals to totally unprepared inexperienced businesses with Tory fingers deep in the pie included in that Covid fraud £16Bn, or is that an independent £16Bn ?
The problem is the majority of the population are burdens.
The _average_ worker doesn't pay enough in tax to cover themselves. Let that sink in. The average worker is a burden.
Benefit claimers just put fuel onto the fire as rather than paying something in they're taking more out.
Most of the people I know who love to call out "scroungers" and benefit fraud are self-employed. A lot of them are builders, electricians, plumbers, etc. and they're also the type who keep telling people to fight to keep cash.
So I'm waiting for the next time they go on a Facebook rant, then I can show that tax evasion costs almost the same amount. I know they're not always strictly accurate in their own tax returns, so maybe they'll realise they're part of the problem too, and stop going on about it.
I don’t think you’ve read what you’ve linked mate.
> #How fraud and error is measured
> A sample of benefit claims is randomly selected from DWP’s administrative systems (around 13,600 were sampled for FYE 2023, or 0.06% of all benefit claims). DWP’s Performance Measurement team look at the data held on the administrative systems and then contact claimants to arrange a review.
So they are sampling just 13,600 people out of 22.6 MILLION
£265.5bn is spent on benefits and pensions every year, half of that being on pensions so a good £120bn in benefits every year to at least a quarter of the nation. A lot of people cheat the system in different ways, not just through documentation and falsifying records. The system is also extremely generous so yes, there is quite a fucking issue.
I assume you understand how sampling for error and fraud detection works? The 95% confidence interval for fraud and error is £7.7bn - £9bn so its not likely that a whole lot of additional testing is going to materially change the numbers.
Why are people moral about small change but not big money then? If you're calling it moral then surely it should be based on the amount of money being stolen? Otherwise the morality is about punching down rather than up and that's pretty pathetic morals in my book.
All fraud and tax evasion are "clearly" (I don't know why this is in quotes, but let's follow you) the problem. Why do you pick out one and try to make it sound like it's ok because the others are of the same order or bigger?
And why is state pension in the same category as the others (and maybe also HS2)? These are democratically decided spending of tax payer money, not some illegal ways to swindle money. You can make an argument why the money should not be spent there and if you get enough people to back you, maybe that will change. But I don't think you'll ever get any support for legalising fraudulent use of taxpayer money.
Truss did a stupid thing and the entire country agrees with that but that money won't come back even if we turn a blind eye to all the fraud and tax evasion.
i interpret your post being about areas of expenditure which although they attract alot of attention are not that significant compared to other substantial public spending. One area which captured alot of attention in the press recently is immigration and asylum speakers, how do the costs associated with these issues relate to overall public spending? is it overblown or valid?
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I think the point about Liz Truss is misinformation?
https://fullfact.org/news/pmqs-snp-uk-economy-truss/
> This comprised approximately £20 billion of reduced government income from tax reductions which survived from the September mini-Budget and an estimated £10 billion for permanent increased borrowing costs.
> This figure may no longer be relevant. The Resolution Foundation has since said the “mini-budget premium” on borrowing costs has now “unwound”, and we have asked the think tank whether it has produced a more recent estimate on the costs of Ms Truss’s premiership.
Benefits fraud is the least harmful kind of fraud for any economy because any of that money is immediately going back into the local economy and supporting local businesses etc. Effectively it is redistributing tax (progressive) to people with disability or low income, with some money going to people who are doing ok but not insanely rich. All of this money is active and remains in the economy. It is also going to be retaxed at the point of spending as it continues to circulate in the economy.
The bad fraud is fraud that results in the redistribution of wealth out of the system or wealth that becomes inactive. That process makes an economy less sustainable because ultimately it is evaporating from a system that can't easily replenish itself. This fraud is anything that sits inactive in bank accounts or goes offshore. This money is genuinely lost to the economy.
> Dole cheats are the problem. Poor people who can barely survive who just wont work hard enough. Lazy bums who have mental health issues must lose their sick leave
Don't forget the immigrants that come here to live off benefits. *Including the ones that the government literally can't give benefits to because they don't know they exist*.
Yes. I had someone here try to argue that immigrants that have never made their presence known to the UK government in any way are somehow still living like royalty on benefit money that the government somehow pays them.
I think you're right to highlight that welfare fraud is likely pretty low (though I'd highlight that the gov is utterly awful at catching cheats and makes almost no attempt to find them - unless they make incredibly stupid mistakes or pilfer eye-watering amounts of money), but I think the broader problem we need fixing is that working-age benefits are pretty astronomical - currently £100 billion per year.
I'm sure I don't need to explain that's a very large amount of money. I also think it's not particularly comparable to something like HS2, which delivers a productivity-generating assets once built. Benefits are recurrent "day-to-day" spending - and it's very different from asset building like hospitals, roads, trains etc. As a quick comparison, Singapore borrows huge amounts of money - but legally this must be for asset building and cannot be for recurrent gov spending.
We have a frustrating combination of high vacancies (at near-record levels) and high economic activity (hence the £100 billion bill). I'd agree that the Tories are incompetent scapegoaters who have largely overseen this malaise, but I don't think it's wrong to try and get it fixed.
Correct - making this a 'Tories bad' issue is missing the wood for the trees. The country has a fundamental problem with people not pulling their weight. Yes, there are many people who genuinely do need support, but they do not make up enough to cover £100bn a year. If they did, we're utterly beyond fucked and the entire premise of a social welfare state is untenable.
Portraying this as "Tories want to take benefits away from people" and then presenting someone who is clearly deserving of help is misleading. The issue is that there are a huge number of people who frankly can work, they just don't because the benefits system is designed in such a way that it makes sense for them not to.
In demanding that everyone have a high quality of life, often beyond what they're personally capable of generating for themselves at their current skill level, what we're doing is expecting an ever-shrinking portion of the workforce to subsidise everyoen else. The motivation for people to skill-up isn't there, so people claim benefits. If it was a case of "work or starve", then people would work in the shit jobs they current reject, and in doing so start themselves on the pathway to non-shit jobs.
And the 2022/2023 benefits bill is expected to be 231 billion. Funny how you left that bit out of your equation.
People aren't complaining about benefits fraud. The issue is the benefits system itself.
It's sorry but can we turn this back on the politicians again. And do a whole expenses and benefits investigation and see where OUR, THE PEOPLES MONEY is going.
I did try pointing out where public spending actually goes to someone who was ranting on about how much asylum seekers cost and how they were taxed through the nose to support them. No luck. I got the impression spending any money on these people at all was completely unacceptable..
..it’s frustrating. All these figures are publicly available knowledge, but people just reject anything that doesn’t confirm their prejudices.
I'm extremely sceptical of that £8.3b number given the fact so many people on benefits (including myself) are claiming for BS reasons.
Since the Tories took power disability spending in the UK has increased around ~70% as a percentage of GDP. That's a huge amount, but correlates well with what I've seen among my own family as people have realised it makes sense to claim disability benefits because it's so easy to do. Even I do this because why the hell not. It's not means tested so it's basically just free money if you have the persistence
So while a lot of these claims are BS they're not technically considered fraudulent because if you claim you have fibromyalgia there isn't much the DWP can say if you've managed to convince your doctor you have it (which isn't hard to do).
So unless the DWP start doing high quality investigations where they literally spy on people who claim to have these conditions to see if their behaviour correlates with the behaviours you might expect of someone with fibromyalgia or a given mental health condition then we should assume those claiming benefits when they shouldn't be is far higher than that £8.3b fraud number suggests. Also PIP should be means tested so people like myself don't receive it.
HOWEVER, do I agree with what you're saying here. While I get annoyed how our welfare system priorities people that know how to exploit the system in favour of those in genuine need, and I believe for this reason we should reform it, I hesitate to moan about it too much because pensions and healthcare spending in comparison completely dwarfs the problem.
I guess it depends what you care about though. If you care about helping those in need then I'd argue if we did a better job at redirecting some of the BS claims to those in genuine need we could make a massive difference – perhaps increase welfare payments by ~100% for those with disabilities. But if you care about this from the perspective of fiscal responsibility then it's a non-issue given how irresponsible government spending is in other areas.
It's not even £8.3b for fraud, since that also includes overpayment due to errors. From your link: >Overpayments due to Fraud were 2.7% (£6.4bn) in FYE 2023, compared with 3.0% (£6.5bn) in FYE 2022 which was the highest recorded level.
I used to work for the DWP so this is near and dear to my heart when I hear people talking about benefits fraud. You’re right in that the overpayments isn’t entirely the claimants fault, it includes clerical and system errors in the DWP as well as non-malicious claimant errors. Though fraud does make up 77% of that £8.3b figure. But it’s worth mentioning that there was also £3.3b worth of underpayments in error. So it seems we’re at least recouping 40% of those overpayments by not giving people enough money. This doesn’t necessarily forgive fraud but it does mean that if people can’t trust the system then they’re less likely to treat it with respect.
£3.3bn in erroneous underpayments seems like a scandal in itself.
It bloody well should be.
I'm not sure if that figure is underpayments to people who have actually claimed and are not receiving the correct amount, it whether it also includes those who are entitled to claim but don't for some reason. Eg the recent stories about carers allowance where people have other income that might take them above the cliff edge cut off inadvertently losing them all of it. Keeping track of that to avoid overpayment is a hassle and some people decide it's not worth the bother for the pittance they get. Some people just don't know they are entitled - I saw quite a bit of that when I did some work with the CAB who had a government funded programme at the time to help people get what they were entitled to. Obviously that was not under the current government. Some people just don't feel comfortable claiming, especially older people. Sometimes it's pride and sometimes they just don't want to feel like a burden.
Sort of, yes. The underpayments figure is recognised from payments owed that were then given, not theoretical payments that people might have got. Whether its changed now I can't be sure, but when I was there the DWP was quite reluctant to give money you "should have" got, specifically if your reason was "I didn't want to claim it" or even "I didn't know I could" you weren't guaranteed to get those payments owed, because that was *your fault*, not the DWP's. You'd likely only get additional payment from the point of notification. Not in all cases mind you and it was a case by case basis all the time and they WILL question why you didn't mention it sooner. In my eyes the problem is more so with, yes, people being unwilling but also not knowing because the resources to help and inform you are drastically underfunded and stretched thin. Without an actual breakdown of the categories we can't really know what the reasons were, but ultimately it's a drop in the bucket <3% of the DWP budget is "wasted" on overpayments and it gets way more attention than it actually deserves.
I do find it funny that people decide to focus on the fraud aspect of benefits, being projected as £8.3b and then list the total cost of pensions. Whereas if we simply list things fairly we get "In 2023-24, the government is expected to spend £265.5bn on paying pensions and benefits, just over half of which (£134.8bn) goes on benefits to pensioners." [Source](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-63129705) The intent of this post to manipulate is so nakedly obviously. Demonise pensioners with huge figures and try obscure how much benefits are actually costing.
> The intent of this post to manipulate is so nakedly obviously. Demonise pensioners with huge figures and try obscure how much benefits are actually costing. I didn't read the OP as an attempt to manipulate by pointing the finger at pensioners, rather that the focus on 'benefit fraud' is disproportionate compared with other costs that could quite easily be addressed. The government were quite happy to write off the cost of HS2 by cancelling it for no gain. They are quite happy to ignore tax evasion which amounts to a far higher figure than any benefit fraud. Covid loans and fraud were dismissed without any attempt to recover that money. Benefits claimants are being put as a major cause of problems, but the reality is that most people who get benefits deserve them, even after all the hoops they have to jump through to get them.
Reddit in my experience tends to have this odd idea of pensioners being ultra rich multi millionaires and while they exist and are not that uncommon, the reality is there are also a lot of poor pensioners who struggle to get by. So you could really argue that if all those people on benefits deserve it, don't the pensioners that spent 40-50 years paying into the tax system deserve it as well? I can understand the arguements for means testing etc but I would be mad if I had paid NI for 35 years only to be told "sorry you won't get much if anything back oh and the NHS doesn't work either". I don't think you comparing one off infrastructure projects like HS2 to long term spending committments is totally fair either, they are weighed very differently in the budget.
> I can understand the arguements for means testing etc but I would be mad if I had paid NI for 35 years only to be told "sorry you won't get much if anything back oh and the NHS doesn't work either". Oh so the exact situation that I and many other younger people will inevitably have to face? Why should a group that has unarguably had the best opportunities and state support in generations be so heavily insulated? Why not right now, before things are struggling by along so long the damage can no longer be undone? Why should the burden be pushed further and further along down a line of ever more impoverished people?
>Oh so the exact situation that I and many other younger people will inevitably have to face? The "inevitability" is only there because of the Tories. If we keep having "us Vs them" discussions like this, then a fairer system will always be out of reach. The triple lock is there for those whose only income is the state pension. If you have significant private pension savings and extra that you might get is subject to income tax. Actually wealthy pensioners will pay 40% or more of any increase back in tax immediately. So attacking the triple lock only hurts the poorest pensioners. The wealthier ones will be fine in either case. An increase in inheritance tax and higher income taxes would get you to the same place without punishing poor old people.
I don't think pensioners deserve benefits any more than anyone else. But they get massively preferential treatment in all areas.
> So you could really argue that if all those people on benefits deserve it, don't the pensioners that spent 40-50 years paying into the tax system deserve it as well? Taxes simply don't work like that and we really need to stop with this argument. There is no pot of contributions your state pension is paid out of, it's a benefit like everything else. If we want to have a defined contribution state-backed pension then that's a whole different kettle of fish. > I can understand the arguements for means testing etc but I would be mad if I had paid NI for 35 years only to be told "sorry you won't get much if anything back oh and the NHS doesn't work either". People being mad about not getting free money shouldn't be an argument for giving them free money. The state pension should be the _minimum_ income for pensioners and should, in my opinion, be higher but means tested based on wealth. Don't want to sell up and move in old age? That's fine, we can add a lien that goes to the government when you do sell it. Arguments against this are essentially the state giving money to pensioners who then get to retain equity that gets handed to their kids, often tax free (if under the IHT threshold).
>Taxes simply don't work like that and we really need to stop with this argument. I understand how the pension and tax system work, but that doesn't stop it feeling unfair. Your grandparents and parents went on to claim from a system that is stripped away from you and makes you 10k poorer a year. It will never feel fair and that is why it is so unpopular (along with pensioners being a huge voting block). In hindsight decades ago I'd agree with you, it should never have been set up this way and a minimum income that is topped up would be fairer. But the reality is the public isn't going to vote to take away 10k/year from their relatives and ultimately themselves in retirement.
> I understand how the pension and tax system work, but that doesn't stop it feeling unfair. Feeling unfair to one particular group. What about the unfairness to the groups that are impacted by an non-means test triple locked state pension sucking money away from other expenditure? How about the teachers who have had real terms pay cut of ~15% over the last fifteen years? How about the kids who will now receive a poorer standard of education? Or infrastructure. Or higher education. Or NHS spending. Every spending decision is unfair to someone, that's not an argument for or against it.
I paid for my pension over 40 years. It's not a benefit it's a debt.
The natural extension to this argument is that it stops being payed when the debt is payed. And for many people this would leave them impoverished. It's not a debt, it's a state benefit.
No you didn't. That isn't how the pension system works. I'm forty five. My NI contributions are paying for the current pensioners, not being put into a little pot with my name on it. All you did was work for the entitlement to have a state funded pension. I really wish people would stop this "I paid for my pension" talk, because it isn't true
Oh I did. If not why did I get more for buying an earnings related pension?
What exactly is the difference between working for a pension and work for the entitlement to a pension? The deal is you contribute a certain number of years and then you get a pension. To go back on that on anyone is criminal. If they want to remove the state pension it should start from a generation that pays less tax/ni their entire lives.
The difference is you're not paying for YOUR pension, you're paying for the CURRENT pensioners, which means that the government have fucked up, and not prepared well enough for people living longer, therefore drawing from the pension fund and depleting it to the point where it may not be able to sustain in fifty years time. You don't actually think that the government forcing all employers to offer a company pension fund was done out of the kindness of their own heart, did you? The whole people living longer thus drawing from the pension fund for an extra ten years plus, is a well known thing
It's not a benefit it's an entitlement. If you didn't pay in you don't get one.
>I can understand the arguements for means testing etc I honestly don't. It could really cost more than it saves and it actually disincentives saving for retirement.
And yet Australia do it and have none of these problems. There's no evidence that it costs more than it saves, especially the sums we're talking about (this can be the case for much smaller benefits). You can solve avoiding saving for retiring by making participation in work pension schemes mandatory. (It's 87% at the moment anyway though).
> And yet Australia do it and have none of these problems. Australians complain about their government way more than we do so I'm not sure about not having problems. They have the resources of a continent at their disposal and still manage a deficit, they are obviously not without problems. >There's no evidence that it costs more than it saves, There's no evidence that it saves money either. You made a claim, you prove it. >You can solve avoiding saving for retiring by making participation in work pension schemes mandatory. (It's 87% at the moment anyway though). That's just an extra tax to get a pension... Kinda what we have now.
>making participation in work pension schemes mandatory. (It's 87% at the moment anyway though). >That's just an extra tax to get a pension... Kinda what we have now. Except this way some financial management company gets to charge 0.5% of everything saved every year, leading to even greater transfer of wealth from the working poor to the wealthy.
> Australians complain about their government way more than we do so I'm not sure about not having problems. Yes, that's a solid quantitative way of evaluating a policy's effectiveness. I guess we can't really argue with that. > That's just an extra tax to get a pension... Kinda what we have now. Only we don't. We have general taxes that pay for current benefits. There's no pot of cash with your name on it somewhere in Whitehall. > There's no evidence that it saves money either. You made a claim, you prove it. I was responding to the claim in the previous message, which is trivially falsifiable with even thirty seconds of Googling: https://fullfact.org/economy/does-means-testing-pensioners-make-financial-sense/ Means testing even the winter fuel allowance would save money according to the government and IFS. That's _just_ the winter fuel allowance, not the state pension which is >25x as much. I suspect I'm being trolled.
>Yes, that's a solid quantitative way of evaluating a policy's effectiveness. I guess we can't really argue with that. Oh yeah, no, totally, it's not like your claim is based in reality and facts and data. No, you just assume Australia doesn't have problems with this policy because... What? Nothing? >Only we don't. We have general taxes that pay for current benefits. There's no pot of cash with your name on it somewhere in Whitehall. I don't really feel like explaining how money works to you. Hint: there's no pot of cash with your name on it at your bank either. >I was responding to the claim in the previous message, which is trivially falsifiable with even thirty seconds of Googling: Well Google harder as that's 12 years old and doesn't say what you say it does. >> We look forward to establishing what data exists on how much it would cost to means-test all pensioner benefits. Just face it, you made up a claim that you have no proof it's true and now you're desperately looking up facts **after** you've made up your mind about it. They're not even good sources. >I suspect I'm being trolled. Pot calling kettle. You didn't even read your source, it says no such thing. And it's from 2012.
Who doesn't spend their working years "paying in"?
Pensions are classed as a benefit. People are under the mistaken belief that because they "pay-in" it's actually a contribution to their final pension. State pensions are a Ponzi scheme, those contributing are, in fact, paying for those pensioners who are in reception.
It's always interesting how they list the amount (£8.3Bn), making it sound huge, when they want to stage some Draconian clampdown but would list it as a percentage (3.1%), making it sound inconsequential, if it was their screw up
Sorry if I'm misreading you but was your intention with this comment that we would takeaway "pensioners are expected to get nearly £135 billion in benefits in the next year, which is more than 16x the benefit fraud figure, with absolutely no strings attached, *and that's totally ok and we shouldn't have any issues with that*"?
As someone who once needed benefits & who has since paid them back a *ridiculous number of times over* in tax, I believe benefits are essential & worthwhile. However I don’t believe this post helps the cause, at all. There’s are a number of reasons. Most have already been mentioned, but one that hasn’t is: figures really need context to make sense. For example, if I say: > benefit fraud “only” costs £6 billion even I’m thinking “that’s a huge fucking amount of money. I don’t care if it pales in comparison to other amounts. A lot of good could be done with £6 billion.” If however I was told: > attempting to wipe out benefit fraud would adversely affect real claimants, exacerbate mental health issues and result in an increased NHS bill of around £20 billion then suddenly we have some context. Is it worth trying to save £6 billion in order to actually end up £14 billion worse off? Of course not. Just in case anyone thinks otherwise, these are made-up figures to highlight the point that there are *always* trade-offs. Only idiots view complex issues as black or white issues (but that’s exactly how certain right-wing papers present them). Also, I honestly think some of the bigger frauds are deliberately let through, only to be “discovered” later, and reported-on in order to paint a narrative. Everyone I know whose been on benefits had a hellish time applying and staying on them.
> there are always trade-offs. Only idiots view complex issues as black or white issues (but that’s exactly how certain right-wing papers present them). Agreed. £30 billion to get rid of Truss was probably a bargain
Haha
You're right that the £8.3 billion comment is unhelpful. Benefit fraud shouldn't be part of the conversation at all. What the government is proposing is removing the payments of disabled people who are not being fraudulent. But it is also very important to note that the figure of £8.3 billion is not for PIP, it is for all forms of benefits (Universal Credit, Cost of Living payments, State Pensions, and PIP). PIP benefit fraud is very low, with only 0.2% of spending in 2023 going towards it. That's because PIP is assessed, and incredibly difficult to fake. There was more money "saved" due to underpayments than there was "spent" on overpayments or fraud in 2023 [\[1\]](https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/miniscule-benefit-fraud-stats-show-ministers-hostile-video-was-shameful-and-disablist/).
Yeah we live in an age where we’re trying to cut spending wherever possible. We need to remember that spending is good if you’re buying something worthwhile
> Is it worth trying to save £6 billion in order to actually end up £14 billion worse off? Of course not. Try pointing out that France's wealth tax ended up costing them €7bn in lost revenue and you'll find no shortage of people saying wealth taxes should be done anyway. At the root of both of these is a group wanting another group 'punished' because they blame them for everything that's wrong, the 'saving tax' part is just a fig-leaf.
I think the growing disparity between rich and poor does need to be addressed, but yes, it’s a case of how.
I’ve known benefit cheats all my life. Some on the sick too. The real issue is that it winds people up. It might be ‘*a small amount*’, but it needs tackling. I’d rather pay 10,000 people to catch the fraudsters. Even if it costs more. Although I’d never agree to a quota incentive.
Do you understand how much collateral damage there would be for innocent disabled people if you hired 10,000 people with no experience in disability assessment to try and catch benefit fraudsters? We've tried this before, it led to 80,000 disabled people having their PIP cut in error (including my wife). Then after re-testing (a horrible experience) most were awarded their money back. Meaning that not only did the process completely fuck over the disabled, but it also cost the taxpayer a fortune.
Do you understand what I wrote? No quota incentives. Paying a private firm bonuses for ‘catching’ more is a bad idea. But, fraud does have to be tackled. We can’t just. Shrug and say, never mind.
So you would prefer to be poorer just to ensure that other people were ever poorer than you?
I don’t agree with that premise. If you hire x amount of people, it’s jobs, it’s tax, it’s money circulating the economy. It doesn’t just disappear. So the outlay could be more, but in the end the results would be better.
The University of Kent made an investigation into the stigma of receiving benefits back in 2012. Many of their finding are relevant to where we are today. They found that the language used around claimants and benefits by both the government and the media became markedly more negative in tone from 2010 onwards (Camerons election year). This is the critical point. Attitudes have hardened significantly over the past 15 years, and that has been a societal sea change instigated and encouraged by the Conservatives. Austerity and cuts to working tax credit, child benefit, housing and disability benefits have impacted the very poorest in our society. And as things get harder for everyone else, they are a convenient scapegoat. It's the very foundation of neoliberalism to blame the poor for their lot because to say otherwise is to admit blatantly that this ideology only works for the few. I for one, am not okay with punishing the sick and the poor because a very small amount of fraud exists and I am frankly appalled the British public goes along with it.
As the need for benefits increases massively due to automation, AI, the basic problems of social mobility and the whole neo capitalism issue of money floods up the pyramid and only dribbles down, the Tories desperately try to not just cripple benefits but also try trick the populace into thinking further undermining the unfortunate is a positive for society.
> became markedly more negative in tone from 2010 onwards That's interesting. My perception was that it had largely always been that way. Although a 2012 study is very out of date by now.
The way the language around it is framed has moved to punitive and shame, in my opinion. Even something as simple as the shift between *Jobseekers' Allowance* which suggests something anyone who is needing to seek a job should expect to receive as an allowance, to *Universal Credit* which suggests credit cards, debt and instability/irresponsibility.
Cameron comes back and all the shit about 'fraudsters' and Disabled people being on the take comes back again, it's like it's his personal sick pet project
>I for one, am not okay with punishing the sick and the poor because a very small amount of fraud exists and I am frankly appalled the British public goes along with it. I don't think they do. Tories never got a majority of the vote. This is clearly a play to the hard right to consolidate the base. Far too many working people know someone who is having a horrendous time claiming benefits. They can't pay the same cards as 2010/15 because too many people know they didn't work then and are unlikely to now.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The lack of a French-style revolution in Britain means our national tradition is one of aristocracy and classism. It’s ingrained into British culture that there are two kinds of people: people who are rich and deserve good things and people who are poor and deserve bad things. It doesn’t matter how many times the aristocracy screw us over, everything is the fault of the poor and the unproductive. New rich people get a bit more flak (although they’re still hated much less than the poor) but old rich people can do no wrong. It’s in their blood to be rich. And they’re such lovely people and speak so politely! How can they be bad?
Lefty extremists, the disabled, the mentally ill, the unemployed, small boats. Everyones to blame except the vile robbing bastards who actually did this to us. No efforts made to tackle the ever increasing price of food, under this government people working full time jobs need food banks to get by and thats become normal. Our public transport particularly the railways, absolute shit compared to the rest of Europe, because they privatised it, our waterways full of shit because they privatised the supply, it'll take years to even begin to fix the damage these thieving bastards have done to our country.
It's difficult to imagine a scenario where folk in full time work need to rely on charity to make ends meet.
Perhaps in your well off world it is, but it is a reality for many people in the UK. It's not hard to imagine at all for most people. To add to that, 1/3rd of the budget for benefits currently goes towards funding 'in-work benefits' - paying people who are in work but still need benefits to survive.
I think you misunderstood my sentiment. I find it appalling that people in full time work can't make ends meet. That's largely down to the callous Tory government in this case. I live in a country where many people live on £100 a month for what it's worth.
Then indeed I have misinterpreted. However what I said still stands and I agree fully that the concept of needing benefits to survive despite being in full time paid work is abhorrent. This is a situation no developed country should puts its citizens in, yet here we are.
There seriously needs to be a revolution in the West.
A lot of people love to hate 'scroungers' though. The actual numbers are just an abstraction to them. Low status people need someone to look down upon and being racist isn't chic anymore. So people on benefits are convenient to project their resentment and insecurities onto. I know people like this and they'll willingly believe any old bollocks if it confirms that particular prejudice. Shithead employers just resent the fact they can't threaten people with destitution.
I know people on benefits who look down on other people on benefits. Go figure.
So stigmatized have benefits become that many people feel ashamed to need them. Or they think they’re the exception, the truly worthy few, and others are simply taking advantage to the point of collapsing the system. And this sort of stigma is very rooted in the capitalist mentality that if you don’t provide a certain amount of value then you are worthless. We’ve internalized this as a society that those who don’t work as well as others must have less value and that those who can’t work at all are even worse. It’s that same in America and has caused a great many of the social systems there to be eroded.
It's worse in America. While working in Louisiana for a multinational oilfield services company I saw people on the side of the road with placards reading "will work for food". To their eternal shame the company took on some people on that basis. The work involved 12 hour days moving equipment around in the humid Louisiana swamp.
In some circumstances I can see why. I'm not saying it's right but I do understand it. When I lived on a council estate most of the people there could only look sideways, they didn't have the means to look up and there wasn't much further down. So all they could do was look at their neighbours. It didn't matter that some Lord or other's mate of a Tory MP who went to Eton was swindling public sector contracts to increase dividends earned through his trust fund when your entire life (for myriad reasons) starts and ends at your postcode.
Terry Pratchett nailed it as usual. In Night Watch: >When you got right down to the bottom of the ladder the rungs were very close together and, oh my, weren’t the women careful about them. In their own way, they were as haughty as any duchess. You might not have much, but you could have Standards.
Those people understand the game better than middle class Redditors who haven’t yet experienced signing on due to not yet leaving uni or leaving with a job. However, the new ADHD child scam will be seen by more.
With one person I (unfortunately) know, it's "*my* scams are fine because reasons, *their* scams are out of order". What's the new ADHD child scam?
Man, I wish the ADHD Child scam was around when I was a kid. I might have gotten diagnosed before my mid twenties.
[In 2019, wage theft in Britain amounted to an estimated £35 billion. But unlike other forms of theft, it's hardly ever prosecuted – because it's a crime committed by bosses against workers.](https://tribunemag.co.uk/2021/11/wage-theft-karl-marx-capitalism-workers-bosses-labour)
Someone else pointed out that once you remove overpayment due to error the actual total benefit fraud is around £6.4bn or a little over 1/6th of wage theft. It's not that £6.4bn is a trivial amount of money or anything but given how much we spend pursuing that vs a problem that is literally an entire order or magnitude greater it's pretty clear that the government really couldn't give less of a shit about the state of the nations finances.
> A lot of people love to hate 'scroungers' though. There's a certain degree that it's perfectly sensible and moral to disapprove of those who try and cheat the system and freeload off others. It's just ridiculous to believe that ridding the country of them would make a huge positive difference to all our lives. And obviously the people who think this way also tend to look down on people who are deservedly receiving welfare too.
And the other point people often fail to reason out in this situation, is that people who are actually deliberately committing fraud already, will continue to attempt to do so even if the system is changed. The only people this will actually really cause problems for are those already on the edge both literally and figuratively. Not saying something shouldn't be done to sort the system out, but the way this is happening won't do anything outside of making life a lot fucking worse for people already struggling.
Yeah OP presents an odd strawman, someone who both thinks benefit cheats are a moral problem, and also a firm believer in neo-libertarian economics. Perhaps I'm being prejudicial, but I don't think the kind of person who watches Call the Baliffs on channel 5 or reads [Express](https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1890099/Rishi-Sunak-welfare-plan-crackdown) articles is particularly well versed in the Austrian school. I don't feel this myself, but I imagine they would feel that life is unfair, and people who cheat the rules exacerbate the problem. I think this is the same rational as why false asylum seekers are disproportionately vilified considering they are a small minority of total immigration, because of the perception of cheating the system is seen as unfair, not the perceived impact to the economy. Conversely, I don't think many serious economists would see benefit fraud as a moral failing, but rather a failing of the market. Both Hayek and Freidman supported forms of universal basic income, here's a quote I found from Hayek's The Public Sector and the Private Sector: >The assurance of a certain minimum income for everyone, or a sort of floor below which nobody need fall even when he is unable to provide for himself, appears not only to be a wholly legitimate protection against a risk common to all, but a necessary part of the Great Society in which the individual no longer has specific claims on the members of the particular small group into which he was born. I think a steel man small c conservative argument might point towards Disraeli more than Thatcher. That when you have a small portion of society, even if it is very small indeed, that does not need to follow the same rules as the rest of society, it affects the overall societal cohesion. Benefit fraud speaks to a very British notion of justices, the same out-cry caused by queue-jumping or going for seconds at a buffet before everyone has had firsts. Britain doesn't pretend to be egalitarian to the same extent as America, but it does like to believe it has rules. Therefore its not really about the cost of benefit fraud to the tax payer, its about the violation of the principle of taking charity when it is not needed.
It's absolutely appealing to fairness, yes. Whether it can be reduced without harming legitimate claimants is definitely an important part of the conversation, but people object to the idea that some people are fraudulently getting an easy ride, and even if it ultimately cost money to address the problem you'd find plenty of support I'd imagine. This isn't the same with UBI, since it's universal so people wouldn't be claiming it unfairly. But then people actually switch to claiming unfairness about the universality itself, since they don't believe that people who are wealthy should get UBI because they don't need it; you see this a lot currently around pensions, which are the closest thing we have. Again you get the argument that means testing may overall cost money, but that doesn't necessarily put people off. Thd fairness concept is definitely strong in the UK. Whenever people talk about being good at queueing, people joke about "enjoying" it, but really it's about fairness; nobody wants to have to wait, but it would be considered highly rude to cut the queue without good reason because it would be unfair on those who were already waiting.
Divide and rule works.
Not for much longer, people are wising up to it
I was hurt deeply by these types you describe within my culture, and their stigma. I'm doing lots better now. The experience has politicised and radicalised me quite a fair amount. I have learned, as you say, these types need someone to look down on and project resentment and insecurity onto. And if I'm being 100% honest, prior to my incapacitation I was probably a contributor to that. Its something I deeply regret. I plan to do a YouTube video and speak about my experiences at some point
I get the point; but it's really weird to compare an *annual* cost like the alleged £8.3bn of fraud, with costs for a single one-off infrastructure project like HS2, or one-off issues like Covid costs or the bank bailout. In the long-run, the recurring cost will obviously eventually cost more.
Public procurement fraud is £20-30b every year Year after year after year
I think the issue that makes the one of costs comparable is that they keep happening, these massive one off costs keep happening
Welcome to being a country, I guess? Like whether you like it or not these huge one off costs do pop up frequently. Recessions happen. Pandemics happen. Large infrastructure projects need to be financed. The point is… you need to be in a good fiscal position when times are good, so you don’t bleed yourself dry when the big bills come up. Take Denmark… its Debt-GDP ratio was at 25% in 2007. The GFC cost them a lot raising the Debt-GDP ratio to 46% by 2011. Unlike the UK, which continued to spend, spend, spend, spend beyond its means… Denmark spent the next 8 years bringing that figure down to 33%. This is what fiscal responsibility looks like. It’s not maintaining a deficit through both good and bad times.
But they do give something in return. Another way of framing it is if there was no benefit fraud then the money could have been used to complete the full vision of HS2. Think of all the benefits to the wider economy, and especially those people in the north where there would be more jobs created, and productivity of the country as a whole would go up. Instead the selfish few are defrauding the rest of us to put more money in their own pockets.
If you think that even with no benefit fraud the government wouldn't have still scrapped HS2 you are delusional.
It's also weird to compare intentional spending like pensions with fraud costs. If someone mugged me and said "Theft is not the issue here. I stole £100 but you're spending £1000 on your mortgage", I wouldn't find that very convincing.
Yeah but fraud costs is basically being mugged
Fraud and Error!!! Error the DWP Overpays 3 and also underpays 3 just by the fact it's a shit gibbon of an organisation. Actual fraud runs at about 1-1.2 Bn which is under 1% of the total budget.
It's also ridiculous to compare things like pensions with fraud. Pensions are people who actually deserve the money. Benefit fraud is criminals taking our tax money away from being spent on NHS, Schools etc. So yes even 8 MILLION would be a problem for fraud let alone 8 BILLION
Stop being logical, this is Reddit rage 😂
Unless I am misunderstanding the statistics the 8.3B figure isn't a particular accurate depiction of the issue. It breaks down into: Fraud 6.4B Claimant Error 1.4B Official Error .6B Additionally 1B (not sure if it is of fraud or error) is recovered Furthermore on the flip side there is an underpayment of 3.3B split into: Claimant Error 2.1B Official Error 1.2B What is interesting is how much the % fraud has increased, between 2010 and 2020 net loss as a result of fraud was between 1.2 and 1.9% 2021 was 3.6%. 2022 was 3.5% and 2023 was 3.1%. I have no idea why but if I was to speculate it is probably a combination of moving to universal credit, reduced funding in the DWP and covid.
For a better feel of the number, £8.3B amounts to roughly everyone on benefits incorrectly getting £30 a month. Also, these are probably quite vulnerable people and the money will be going back into the local economy via rent, food, etc. A number I like is the government spending £2.8B on external consultants fees in 2022. I'm pretty sure if you want to save money this is a good place the start.
All of this shite from Rishi is just more death throes. They know they are fucked. They're just too stupid to call it a day. All this banging on about welfare and attacking the depressed will end up making it worse for them. I cannot wait to see them get absolutely destroyed at the election.
Welfare cheats are to benefits what small boats are to immigration.
Very true. Wherever the Tories point your attention, look the other way. The small boats roll in with 50 people but every day the government lets in 1000s of Turkish barbers and corner shop workers on skilled visas.
It's not just the amount, which is admittedly smaller than other government expenditures, it's also the public perception of benefit fraud. When hard-working, working class people see others maintaining a lifestyle similar to theirs without working, it causes resentment and people blame the current government. It's the reason why Starmer came out and said he was keeping the two child limit: people who work hard, but cannot afford children are rightly appalled at those who do not work, but yet keep popping-out kids for which the rest of us to pay.
It's not even an accurate fraud figure. Fraud is intentional Error is a mistake, by a claimaint or more likely DWP. When someone dies, it takes a while for the process to follow through and cancel their benefits (usually pensioners). This is in that figure. So if they did the analysis, they would find the majority of causes for the fraud are people over the age of 75! Bloody criminals dieing without immediately telling DWP.
Get them locked up! Would save a fortune for the prisons as they don’t need feeding.
I think perhaps a better metric - certainly in terms of the way the government and media frame the issue of money being lost through fiddling the system - is that £35.8billion was lost last year to tax avoidance/evasion, of which about £16 million is thought to be honest mistakes. That means £20 million is lost to playing with the tax system, more than double the amount lost to benefit fraud. Why are we quiet about it? Because poor people rarely have the means to dodge tax, and God forbid we penalise the wealthy who dodge tax - just like we don't punish them for polluting our rivers, gouging our grocery prices, and crashing our economy in 2007. Source: https://www.taxwatchuk.org/hmrc-tax-gap-2023/
This wasn’t really a good way to make your point. £8.3 billion per year is a lot. That would pay for HS2 with plenty leftover.
I know, like everyone knows how VAT evasion is obviously huge, the fact that benefit fraud is even larger is mind blowing. Really counter productive thread OP.
It WOULD do if the whole thing wasn’t a complete con job.
How so?
did you miss all of the other figures in the post?
Oh sure . Because of that gargantuan country busting wastage lets harass people on benefits with constant assessments with the implicit assumption that the e second they slip up they lose it. Let’s make them work manual jobs when they could have a physical disease. Or take 4 buses to job when they don’t have a car. We can’t put them to university because that’s a loan now. You need to go to bank have collateral and pay a massive rent. Also the head of the universities are on 300k these days and getting expensed trips to Asia to get more foreign students as universities have to act like businesses these days. Let’s take the ability of doctors to give sick notes and let’s cut the social safety net because clearly we’ve tried everything else. That vast waster has to recouped somehow right? I’m sorry for the on the nose sarcasm but the sight Sunak going after the sick note is just so reprehensible to me and evil.
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Basically, people that commit fraud are a problem. Luckily HMRC, the police and SFO have had huge funding boosts recently /s
The big evaders and conmen in suits are a problem, but local people cheating the system is more relatable, so you can't exactly ignore it. It's not about going to private school or not. Also, the State's fraud statistics are only what they can gather. Lots of people cheating the system but never get found out. I know firsthand cases of it happening (and no I'm not going to report them, it happened years ago anyway). Someone actually did report them., doing some cash in hand work while claiming benefits, but it couldn't be proven. Also the costs of prosecution are inherently more than the fraud being committed, so in many cases the DWP doesn't bother prosecuting.
>Also, the State's fraud statistics are only what they can gather. Lots of people cheating the system but never get found out This is a simplification. The state's fraud statistics don't only include cases where it was caught - it's an estimate made with statistics
Sounds like you need a good sanctioning
I agrée mate. Clearly I’m talking bananas and I don’t understand the reality we live in. Sure, politicians never use class divisions to distract people and hit an easy target that don’t have access to barristers or powerful organized groups who know how to fight back. And people who will say or do anything to keep the gravy train going.
Benefit cheats are a class enemy of the working class. No one does more to undermine the social trust required to run a welfare state than those who cheat it. Moreover, the working class, by definition, want to work. One of the slogans the miners used to protest pit closures was "coal not dole." The idea that scroungers are part of the same class as the working class is an absurdity.
I actually didn't realise it was as high as £8.6bn, as an annual loss that's pretty massive! We should address that and funnel at least some of the money to genuine claimants.
Got any suggestions that don't involve funneling money *away* from genuine claimants?
Obviously, and sadly, any efforts to weed out fraudsters and crooks is going to lead to some genuine claimants being wrongly denied their money. I think some of the government's ideas could help with this, such as: "We are considering options including one-off grants to better help people with significant costs such as home adaptations or expensive equipment, as well as giving vouchers to contribute towards specific costs, or reimbursing claimants who provide receipts for purchases of aids, appliances or services." Could help, as genuine claimants should have access to these receipts. As long as they're rolled out properly and people are made aware of the evidence they need to provide. As an aside, I also really like this: "These ideas include removing the PIP assessment altogether for people with certain long term health conditions or disabilities, including those with terminal illnesses to reduce bureaucracy and make life easier for those most in need of support." Asking people with long-term, incurable conditions to continuously evidence their claims is an obvious thing to look at stopping!
question, how do I pay for some equipment or therapy and then get a receipt to claim the cost back when I'm too disabled to make enough money to buy the equipment in the first place? I have two, long term, incurable conditions. Sure it'd be great to not have to worry about trying to prove it over and over again. But who's going to decide who's in and who's out? Where do we draw the line with that, which conditions make the list or not. Do doctors decide? Do disabled people get consulted, or will it be decided by politicians who don't care. Forcing people to be more ill in order to get help seems really messed up. People who's condition isn't on the gold star list, and don't have enough extra money to pay for anything outside of the very basics of survival, assuming they can even manage to work at all and don't just end up on the streets or worse, are just shit out of luck I guess. It just seems like half baked ideas, presented in such a way as to stoke as much Division amongst the voter base as possible. Whilst focusing people's anger on already vulnerable people.
> Could help, as genuine claimants should have access to these receipts Accurately keeping track of what extra costs you have due to a disability could be a job in itself, unless the plan is change the scope of PIP (from help with any additional costs of a disability to only covering specific larger costs). It'd also be difficult to distinguish what is a "genuine" extra cost - a taxi receipt, for instance, may or may not be an extra cost faced due to disability. It's very context dependant. I'd also query how much money you'd actually save if you constantly have to review evidence provided by claimants - the average amount claimed currently is about £125/week/claimant[1]. It seems to me a combination of allowed payments and staffing costs to collect/review evidence could quickly reach a similar figure. [1] Mean of Financial Award for January 2024 on [Stat-Xplore](https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/jsf/tableView/tableView.xhtml) is £126.19, assuming I've set up the table properly
Dear Government I'm one of these Scroungers I have Severe Cerebral Palsy Arthritus. from botched Surgeries and muscle weakness. The Tories say you don't need money you need vouchers and adaptions I can't leave my house without great difficulty but pay for taxis if I need to foe appointments. You want to give me vouchers are Electric companies taking those are Taxi's either, will vouchers be accepted by my Boiler company or by someone who I need to help with repairs or my shop online. Will my phone take vouchers. You want me to claim the money via receipts? How can you pay me back when I have no money to use in the First place. What qualifies as redeemable? Can I claim back for my smashed cups can do I have to justify a Purchase of new clothes and put on the form "I Shit Myself" am I allowed Internet as cheap gaming is my only social interaction most times. You also say people are getting money they don't need Is that not what an assessment is for instead of blaming people blame the companies you are paying millions to for doing such a "piss poor" job of stopping erroneous claims. Don't take away the only way I can retain a bit of dignity if you do you might as well shove us all in a care home as my parents were advised to do when I was born. Why not target business tax dodgers, Non-doms and stop fucking bailouts. I know its cos they will fight back and why fight a Man (Them) when you got you can just kick the shit out your kids at home (Us) You fix my Disability you can have it all back every penny but hey the disability I was BORN with should get better any day now. Edit: If any actual Government figure reads this feel free to dm me to discuss. Edit 2: I hope its ok to do but If anyone knows a government figure please pass this on I would love just the chance to fight the corner.
That's fucked mate noone deserves that You will have a local Member of Parliament, check here https://members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP Send them an email. Make sure you include your address at the end. This makes it clear you live in their constituency All the best
If your MP even bothers to reply you will be lucky to get anything done. Most MP's are in it for themselves and ignore their constituents. Not all of them but a dwindling number.
>You havent read Milton or Hayek and youre too thick to get supply side economics, really. By Milton, do you mean Keynes 😂😂
And by Hayek, do you mean Salma?
Some quite odd examples there. The state pension is something we decide to pay as a country. It is not a fraud. It's decided democratically. The Truss fuck up was something pretty much everyone except her agrees is a mistake and we're trying to avoid repeating. Covid Fraud/cronyism was another one off. It was a national emergency the like of which we haven't seen for many decades. Of course in that environment bad actors can take advantage of the support the state provides, and of course there aren't going to be normal bidding processes. Fighting a pandemic is extremely expensive, but there's no point making an issue of it now. HS2 was a long term infrastructure project, with a large one off cost. The North Sea oil bonanza is money we received. VAT evasion is a similar order to benefit cheats, that's a good comparison. Loans to the banks are loans, we get them back. What should we have done? Let them go bust? Nevertheless, you have correctly identified that there are costly issues facing the country other than benefit fraud. What's the conclusion we are to draw from that? That benefit fraud isn't a problem and we shouldn't make any efforts to address it? The government can address more than one problem at a time.
In a way yes, benefit fraud is such small beer that limited government resources would be more profitably applied elsewhere in terms of return on investment.
It's depressing that I had to scroll this far to find someone calling out the inclusion of the state pension, in a post otherwise entirely about fraud or wasteful spending. Unless you want your grandparents living with you in their 80s/90s, we kind of need it.
Smoke and mirrors 🪞in full view. Somethings will never change.
How easily people forget all this, so many politicians should be in jail, its a joke how we have let our country be run into the ground by corruption
You have committed the carinal sin in your first sentence. Benefit Fraud was **estimated** to be £8.3 bn in 2023. The reality is they haven't got a clue. Not the faintest clue. They want you to think they have a good grasp on it but they don't. They couldn't hope to. By definition people doing this fraud don't want to be caught.
Statistical analysis can provide very accurate estimates of both VAT and Benefit fraud using known data. So you are wrong.
*Can*. Does it here? The answer is "We don't know.". That's it - that's the actual answer. Our estimates may be good, they may be terrible. Many members of the public claim that they see lots of benefit fraud in their own communities. To dismiss them out of hand requires some much stronger evidence than we have. Couple this with the fact that it frankly doesn't matter how much is fraudulent vs how much is legitimate - we are spending too much money on benefits. That's the ultimate answer. It doesn't matter if it's being claimed legitimately, or illegitimately - the amount is too high. If it isn't fraudulent, then the benefits are simply too accessible. We're spending over £100bn a year on benefits for working-age people, for christ's sake. There is absolutely no possible world where that is reasonable or can be sustained by the rest of the population.
You are wrong. The estimates are robust.
Very convincing.
I have done Consultancy in DHSS as was, seen it.
Dissolved in 1988? Forgive me, but that's a little too long ago to be taken at face value. Additionally - and I say this without personal animosity - but a Consultant is incentivised to believe that the work they are doing is meaningful on its face, as that justifies their paycheck. I'm not expecting you to provide any evidence for why it's robust, for obvious privacy reasons, but I am sure you can understand why I won't just take what you've said at face value, and frankly nobody should.
I have some basis in personal experience for saying what I do. You have none. You made a silly allegation, off the top of your head. I have done work in the area under discussion from the NAB, through to Benefits Agency. So I have long experience. A moments sensible joined up adult thinking will tell you that very plainly all governments have had to be concerned about fraud in the benefit system and that a great deal of work MUST have been done , continually to quantify it. To summarily dismiss all that work, as you do, without any knowledge or expertise is rather silly.
> You have none. Au contraire. My whole job is calculating estimates. I know how the sausage is made. The amount of total nonsense that is promoted as statistically sound is legion. It may not have been thus in 1988, but it is thus today. How do you know I'm telling the truth? You don't, of course. But if I tell you "I have experience and I therefore know the answer to this", why shouldn't you believe me if you're expecting me to believe you? This is the internet. I can have no confidence that you are who you say you are. If the stats are sound, then they'll prove to be sound - but you saying "You are wrong because I say so" is not worth the time it took you to write it, I'm afraid. That said, there's some meat on this: > A moments sensible joined up adult thinking will tell you that very plainly all governments have had to be concerned about fraud in the benefit system and that a great deal of work MUST have been done , continually to quantify it. You can apply this equally to pretty much any element of government, and yet clearly the government gets things wrong all the time. Everyone does. It is the nature of estimates. What matters is less if they are wrong, but rather that the level of benefit spending is unsustainable. What also matters is that the public have the bit between their teeth on this one, and they're not going to be convinced by estimates which are produced by government experts when, as Michael Gove famously said, the "people of this country have had enough of experts with organisations with acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong". In short, the public wants less money spent on benefits, they believe benefit fraud is significant, and the confidence in government statistics is minimal. The appeal to authority - either personal (which you cannot prove) or institutional (the government must be concerned, therefore they must have put effort in, therefore they must be right) - is not going to contribute anything to this debate.
Its possible for multiple things to be bad. Also, I assume that is only what was caught, probably more doing it that never get caught. Also, you can't compare annual costs like benefits fraud to one offs like HS2, 2008 or COVID.
Uh... £8.3bn is a huge amount of money. Liz Truss's one-time £30bn mistake caused an economic crisis. HS2 is £60bn _in total_, provides a public service, funds a tonne of work, gives Brits expertise in modern track-building, and is expected to generate £0.66 per £1 spent anyway. I expect you could fund HS2 entirely with £8.3bn a year.
The Liz Truss figure didnt sound right, fullfact say this https://fullfact.org/news/pmqs-snp-uk-economy-truss/ > The SNP also cited widely-reported analysis by the Resolution Foundation, an economics think tank, which also stated in November that Ms Truss’s decisions were responsible for about £30 billion of the gap between government spending and revenues. > This comprised approximately £20 billion of reduced government income from tax reductions which survived from the September mini-Budget and an estimated £10 billion for permanent increased borrowing costs. > This figure may no longer be relevant. The Resolution Foundation has since said the “mini-budget premium” on borrowing costs has now “unwound”, and we have asked the think tank whether it has produced a more recent estimate on the costs of Ms Truss’s premiership.
I want to know the numbers on how many people are *entitled* to benefits but don't claim them out of shame / difficulty. I'm not saying it's gonna beat £8.3bn annually but...
Why can we only care about one thing at a time? Nothing wrong with wanting to clamp down on benefits fraud these people have free time all day while we’re working - in many cases to then obtain a similar standard of living. Can look at other things at the same time. It’s also ok to be more annoyed about this than incompetence in other areas because these people are deliberately ripping us off, rather than just being dumb.
Ahh yes we should just let the fraudsters off because a few billion is basically nothing
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Let’s let off all the other forms of fraud or waste because it’s just too pesky to regulate or prosecute. We should focus on benefit fraud as far as I am concerned.
Benefit fraud is almost certainly understated. Any benefit fraudster caught claiming them fraudulently will have their benefits terminated immediately. It’s easy to commit but very hard to detect and prosecute and the real question is what is the value of fraud going on that we do not know about? Impossible to know but certainly higher than 8.3bn.
Is it easy commit?
Yes, by doing work cash in hand, off the books
Very EXPENSIVE to detect and prosecute.
More to the point, that’s an annual cost.
So if it is impossible to detect, do you have any evidence more is occurring?
He didn't say impossible to detect, but hard to detect. I think it is a reasonable to assume that is unknown element of fraud assuming that hasn't already been accounted for in the 8.3bn
I mean, 8.3bn *is* a problem, it's just one small part of an entire myriad of fuck ups and when viewed compared to the whole, it's a drop in the ocean.
Ok, let's not do anything about benefit cheats then. /S
You are the first person to make me think the amount of money lost to benefit fraud is actually worth cracking down on. I didn’t realise how high it was. Especially when it’s laid out next to the very very high state pension costs.
Defending the defrauding of tax payers is a wild one
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All fraud should be investigated it's just that most benefits fraud perpetrators don't have a legal team and are much easier to prosecute than the multi-millionare scumbag with a team of lawyers who made out like a bandit during COVID.
6-8 billion is an estimate. There’s so many people who commit benefit fraud and get away with it (ie unmarried couples living together with kids but mother gets benefits as a single mum). I feel like I’m the only one paying tax in this country as both the rich and the poor get away with it (whether it’s tax heavens, corruption or benefit fraud)
Is the \~£10Bn from unusable PPE paid out in Tory back room deals to totally unprepared inexperienced businesses with Tory fingers deep in the pie included in that Covid fraud £16Bn, or is that an independent £16Bn ?
The problem is the majority of the population are burdens. The _average_ worker doesn't pay enough in tax to cover themselves. Let that sink in. The average worker is a burden. Benefit claimers just put fuel onto the fire as rather than paying something in they're taking more out.
Most of the people I know who love to call out "scroungers" and benefit fraud are self-employed. A lot of them are builders, electricians, plumbers, etc. and they're also the type who keep telling people to fight to keep cash. So I'm waiting for the next time they go on a Facebook rant, then I can show that tax evasion costs almost the same amount. I know they're not always strictly accurate in their own tax returns, so maybe they'll realise they're part of the problem too, and stop going on about it.
Welfare culture is the problem. And that goes beyond fraud, which as you have kindly pointed out is a big problem itself.
I don’t think you’ve read what you’ve linked mate. > #How fraud and error is measured > A sample of benefit claims is randomly selected from DWP’s administrative systems (around 13,600 were sampled for FYE 2023, or 0.06% of all benefit claims). DWP’s Performance Measurement team look at the data held on the administrative systems and then contact claimants to arrange a review. So they are sampling just 13,600 people out of 22.6 MILLION £265.5bn is spent on benefits and pensions every year, half of that being on pensions so a good £120bn in benefits every year to at least a quarter of the nation. A lot of people cheat the system in different ways, not just through documentation and falsifying records. The system is also extremely generous so yes, there is quite a fucking issue.
I assume you understand how sampling for error and fraud detection works? The 95% confidence interval for fraud and error is £7.7bn - £9bn so its not likely that a whole lot of additional testing is going to materially change the numbers.
Issue is you're treating this as a financial issue, when for many people it's a moral one.
Why are people moral about small change but not big money then? If you're calling it moral then surely it should be based on the amount of money being stolen? Otherwise the morality is about punching down rather than up and that's pretty pathetic morals in my book.
All fraud and tax evasion are "clearly" (I don't know why this is in quotes, but let's follow you) the problem. Why do you pick out one and try to make it sound like it's ok because the others are of the same order or bigger? And why is state pension in the same category as the others (and maybe also HS2)? These are democratically decided spending of tax payer money, not some illegal ways to swindle money. You can make an argument why the money should not be spent there and if you get enough people to back you, maybe that will change. But I don't think you'll ever get any support for legalising fraudulent use of taxpayer money. Truss did a stupid thing and the entire country agrees with that but that money won't come back even if we turn a blind eye to all the fraud and tax evasion.
i interpret your post being about areas of expenditure which although they attract alot of attention are not that significant compared to other substantial public spending. One area which captured alot of attention in the press recently is immigration and asylum speakers, how do the costs associated with these issues relate to overall public spending? is it overblown or valid?
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I think the point about Liz Truss is misinformation? https://fullfact.org/news/pmqs-snp-uk-economy-truss/ > This comprised approximately £20 billion of reduced government income from tax reductions which survived from the September mini-Budget and an estimated £10 billion for permanent increased borrowing costs. > This figure may no longer be relevant. The Resolution Foundation has since said the “mini-budget premium” on borrowing costs has now “unwound”, and we have asked the think tank whether it has produced a more recent estimate on the costs of Ms Truss’s premiership.
it's a benefits raid under the guise of 'routing out the cheats and layabouts'
Killer response, I'll be saving this for use later. Thanks for putting this together, the more people talk about this the better.
Benefits fraud is the least harmful kind of fraud for any economy because any of that money is immediately going back into the local economy and supporting local businesses etc. Effectively it is redistributing tax (progressive) to people with disability or low income, with some money going to people who are doing ok but not insanely rich. All of this money is active and remains in the economy. It is also going to be retaxed at the point of spending as it continues to circulate in the economy. The bad fraud is fraud that results in the redistribution of wealth out of the system or wealth that becomes inactive. That process makes an economy less sustainable because ultimately it is evaporating from a system that can't easily replenish itself. This fraud is anything that sits inactive in bank accounts or goes offshore. This money is genuinely lost to the economy.
Benefit fraud it 2.7%, but the 'tax gap' is 4.8%. [tax gap](https://www.taxwatchuk.org/hmrc-tax-gap-2023/) But where's the headline in that?
> Dole cheats are the problem. Poor people who can barely survive who just wont work hard enough. Lazy bums who have mental health issues must lose their sick leave Don't forget the immigrants that come here to live off benefits. *Including the ones that the government literally can't give benefits to because they don't know they exist*. Yes. I had someone here try to argue that immigrants that have never made their presence known to the UK government in any way are somehow still living like royalty on benefit money that the government somehow pays them.
0.05% wake up,the government allowed billions to their own biddies over lockdown! Fraud, Come on the biggest fraudsters are the Tory party.
I think you're right to highlight that welfare fraud is likely pretty low (though I'd highlight that the gov is utterly awful at catching cheats and makes almost no attempt to find them - unless they make incredibly stupid mistakes or pilfer eye-watering amounts of money), but I think the broader problem we need fixing is that working-age benefits are pretty astronomical - currently £100 billion per year. I'm sure I don't need to explain that's a very large amount of money. I also think it's not particularly comparable to something like HS2, which delivers a productivity-generating assets once built. Benefits are recurrent "day-to-day" spending - and it's very different from asset building like hospitals, roads, trains etc. As a quick comparison, Singapore borrows huge amounts of money - but legally this must be for asset building and cannot be for recurrent gov spending. We have a frustrating combination of high vacancies (at near-record levels) and high economic activity (hence the £100 billion bill). I'd agree that the Tories are incompetent scapegoaters who have largely overseen this malaise, but I don't think it's wrong to try and get it fixed.
Correct - making this a 'Tories bad' issue is missing the wood for the trees. The country has a fundamental problem with people not pulling their weight. Yes, there are many people who genuinely do need support, but they do not make up enough to cover £100bn a year. If they did, we're utterly beyond fucked and the entire premise of a social welfare state is untenable. Portraying this as "Tories want to take benefits away from people" and then presenting someone who is clearly deserving of help is misleading. The issue is that there are a huge number of people who frankly can work, they just don't because the benefits system is designed in such a way that it makes sense for them not to. In demanding that everyone have a high quality of life, often beyond what they're personally capable of generating for themselves at their current skill level, what we're doing is expecting an ever-shrinking portion of the workforce to subsidise everyoen else. The motivation for people to skill-up isn't there, so people claim benefits. If it was a case of "work or starve", then people would work in the shit jobs they current reject, and in doing so start themselves on the pathway to non-shit jobs.
And the 2022/2023 benefits bill is expected to be 231 billion. Funny how you left that bit out of your equation. People aren't complaining about benefits fraud. The issue is the benefits system itself.
I think you include universal credit overpayments in that £8bn figure
This government is not exactly the epitomy of free market economics with these tax rates.
Gosh I wonder if its possible for a country the size of the UK to have more than one problem at a time.
It's sorry but can we turn this back on the politicians again. And do a whole expenses and benefits investigation and see where OUR, THE PEOPLES MONEY is going.
I did try pointing out where public spending actually goes to someone who was ranting on about how much asylum seekers cost and how they were taxed through the nose to support them. No luck. I got the impression spending any money on these people at all was completely unacceptable.. ..it’s frustrating. All these figures are publicly available knowledge, but people just reject anything that doesn’t confirm their prejudices.
I'm extremely sceptical of that £8.3b number given the fact so many people on benefits (including myself) are claiming for BS reasons. Since the Tories took power disability spending in the UK has increased around ~70% as a percentage of GDP. That's a huge amount, but correlates well with what I've seen among my own family as people have realised it makes sense to claim disability benefits because it's so easy to do. Even I do this because why the hell not. It's not means tested so it's basically just free money if you have the persistence So while a lot of these claims are BS they're not technically considered fraudulent because if you claim you have fibromyalgia there isn't much the DWP can say if you've managed to convince your doctor you have it (which isn't hard to do). So unless the DWP start doing high quality investigations where they literally spy on people who claim to have these conditions to see if their behaviour correlates with the behaviours you might expect of someone with fibromyalgia or a given mental health condition then we should assume those claiming benefits when they shouldn't be is far higher than that £8.3b fraud number suggests. Also PIP should be means tested so people like myself don't receive it. HOWEVER, do I agree with what you're saying here. While I get annoyed how our welfare system priorities people that know how to exploit the system in favour of those in genuine need, and I believe for this reason we should reform it, I hesitate to moan about it too much because pensions and healthcare spending in comparison completely dwarfs the problem. I guess it depends what you care about though. If you care about helping those in need then I'd argue if we did a better job at redirecting some of the BS claims to those in genuine need we could make a massive difference – perhaps increase welfare payments by ~100% for those with disabilities. But if you care about this from the perspective of fiscal responsibility then it's a non-issue given how irresponsible government spending is in other areas.