Benefits Fraud: would the taxpayer save money by giving every citizen their due, not a penny more, not a penny less? Actually, it would cost £12.7 billion EXTRA!
[I've re-blogged this excellent article here unedited from the official blog of the Guardian cartoon strip' http://www.blog.rippedoffbritons.com/. Was published on that blog 19th June 2011. Just discovered via facebook! It's even more valid now than when originally written 1 year ago!]
Moral outrage is about something that doesn’t affect you
personally. If someone pulls the leg off your teddy bear, it’s not moral outrage
you are feeling – just rage. (No, really, I forgave you years ago. You know who
you are!)
Moral outrage is all about the principal. And is
magnified more by how close the offender is to you than by the magnitude of the
offence.
- Morally Outrageous: Someone who is about the
same as us, same habits, same social group, doing something naughty. Outrageous
because they are getting away with something we could get away with, if only we
could be a bit more immoral:
- Jumping the queue
- Driving like an idiot
- Benefits fraud
- Just Damn Annoying: Someone very different to us: e.g. a celebrity, top company executive, or banker. Less outrageous, because their naughtiness is something we could only aspire to in our dreams/nightmares:
- Getting let off by the police for extreme bad behaviour, including assault and substance abuse
- Taking multi-million bonuses while wrecking the world economy
- Asset stripping companies, and throwing pensioners onto the streets
When Ed Miliband, the leader of the UK Labour Party,
wanted to give his outraged morals an airing in
a speech earlier this month, he picked on two sets of bogeymen.
1)
A man he had met who “hadn’t been able to work since he was injured doing
his job. It was a real injury, and he was obviously a good man who cared for his
children. But I was convinced that there were other jobs he could
do.”
2)
The executives of “Southern Cross care homes - where millions were
plundered over the years leaving the business vulnerable, the elderly people in
their care at risk and their families feeling betrayed.”
How did a “good man who cared for his children”, claiming
£71.10 a week in incapacity benefit while looking pretty fit to Miliband, find
himself in the whiffy company of unashamed slash-and-burn executives who pocketed
an estimated £500million at the expense of pensioners?
The sad truth is the thought of some individual scamming
us taxpayers out of £71.10 per week in incapacity benefit while actually being
capable of flipping hamburgers for minimum wage is enough to blow all our other
troubles away. We will soon forget about Southern Cross, but the bitterness for
benefits cheats will stay with us.
No matter that we can’t afford a proper armed forces or a
health service, we need to hand our schools to private companies, have to work
until we are older and get less pension. Misfortunes caused by avaricious
bankers who were let off the leash, self-serving politicians who got rid of the
leash, and incompetent regulators who wouldn’t know how to use that tricky-dicky
catch on the leash even if they had a leash and the inclination to use
it.
What we need to do, we are told by politicians to the
left and to the right, is tighten up on the benefits system. Make sure that
everyone gets just what they are entitled to, not a penny more and not a penny
less.
But would tightening up save us any money? The figures
show that it would actually cost us billions.
In these
straitened times, saving money is what it’s all about. After all, did we scrap
HMS Ark Royal because we didn’t need it? If so, why did we have it? By taking
out the Ark Royal, bankers did something last achieved by a German U-Boat in
1941.
All
that bad banking is overlooked, but benefits fraud is not. So let's take a
closer look at those benefits fraud figures:
- £3.1 billion was overpaid, of which £1 billion was fraudulently taken in benefits. The rest was due to errors by the DWP and by the customers.
- £1.3 billion was underpaid, all of which was due to DWP and customer errors.
- NET Overpayment = £1.8 billion
On the other hand, the amount that was simply not
claimed at all is many times this.
The fact is, if everyone got what they were entitled to,
nothing more and nothing less, then Department of Works and Pensions figures
show it would all cost us £billions MORE!
The last thing governments want is to be clear about the
uncomfortable truths. So, here are the meanings of key bits of official-ese you
will need for the next bit:
Caseload take-up compares the number of benefit recipients -
averaged over the year - with the number who would be receiving [benefits] if
everyone took up their entitlement for the full period of their
entitlement.
Expenditure take-up compares the total amount of benefit
received - averaged over the year - with the total amount that would be received
if everyone took up their entitlement for the full period of their
entitlement.
Income Support & Employment and Support Allowance
- Take-up between 78% and 90% by caseload.
- Take-up between 85% and 94% by expenditure.
Pension Credit
- Take-up between 62% and 73% by caseload.
- Take-up between 71% and 81% by expenditure.
Housing Benefit
- Take-up between 77% and 86% by caseload.
- Take-up between 82% and 90% by expenditure.
Council Tax Benefit
- Take-up between 63% and 70% by caseload.
- Take-up between 65% and 73% by expenditure.
Jobseeker’s Allowance (Income-Based)
- Take-up between 47% and 59% by caseload.
- Take-up between 49% and 63% by expenditure.
And here are the totals in folding
money:
Department of
Works and Pensions, research published in June 2010.
Fraud in 2009/10 cost £1billion, which was less than 1% of total
benefits payments. The reality is that if the government ran a campaign to
ensure everyone took only what was coming to them, it would cost up to an extra
£12.7 billion. How likely are they to do that at a time like this?
Politicians are overwhelmingly from the comfortable
middle classes. Brought up traditionally, they will have all watched all those
optimistic Hollywood musicals repeated over the years at Christmas. Few were
repeated more often during the childhoods of this current generation of politicians than this song from “The King
and I”.
Whenever I
feel afraid
I hold my
head erect
And whistle a
happy tune
So no one
will suspect
I'm afraid.
While
shivering in my shoes
I strike a
careless pose
And whistle a
happy tune
And no one
ever knows
I'm afraid.
The result of
this deception
Is very
strange to tell
For when I
fool the people
I fear I fool
myself as well!
Singing the song of benefits fraud finds plenty joining
in from the broadcast, online, and print media. Politicians, always afraid of
being found out, are happy to take cover and comfort wherever they can find
it.
Benefits fraud, certainly a problem in itself, has proved
successful in diverting Ripped-Off Britons from the much bigger problems in
their lives. Politicians hope that by making ordinary Britons suspicious of and
annoyed with their neighbours, they will forget they are getting ripped-off far
far more by utility companies, banks, insurers, the taxman, and the government
itself. Bigger problems that the politicians are too afraid, or too complicit
in, to deal with.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Love, Light & Laughter
Starlord
No comments:
Post a Comment