New statistics released this month have again demonstrated that errors at the DWP cost nearly twice as much as fraud by claimants.
On the 16th of June the DWP released a set of statistics running up to December 2010 in their report "Fraud and Error in the benefit system."
Despite the lurid coverage which cases of benefit fraud receive in the press, especially the Tory rags, the papers have paid little attention to a report showing that while just 0.8% of benefit spending is taken up by fraud, 1.4% is paid out in error.
Now this certainly undermines the idea that workshy claimants scamming the system are one of the reasons the nation's finances are in the state they are (as if this was necessary after years of financial turmoil and bank bailouts). This is endlessly promoted in rags splashing tales of claimants buying Yachts and holiday homes, and on expensive government ad campaigns featuring crass stereotypes of working class people. I've yet to find a report of this in the mainstream press.
Instead, we've seen the millionaires and aristocrats in cabinet claiming that the nation can't afford schools and hospitals because billions is lost to Fraud. According to Francis Maude, son of another wealthy Tory MP, "We will not stand by and allow this to happen any longer". He promises a new, "zero-tolerance culture" to "stamp out fraud".
This feigned indignation is simply ideological cover for a huge assault on the standards of living of the majority of people in this country - through service and benefit cuts, redundancies, privatisations and inflation. This assault, ostensibly to balance the books following the largest and severest crisis of capitalism in decades, can be resisted. And while the facts are there in plain sight, we can't expect the reportage of inconvenient truths from the mainstream media, and we'll need to make our case ourselves.
Comments
Word, Django. I will use this
Word, Django. I will use this in discussions with people!
I would refer people to my
I would refer people to my recent comment in case they actually find themselves in trouble from a 'cock-up':
http://libcom.org/history/3-strikes-funeral-comments-anti-jsa-struggle#comment-433608
Balancing the books by
Balancing the books by tracking benefit cheats is just a secondary aim.
The primary purpose of those ads is to ostracise and demonise people in need. If you take empathy out of people, what other need is there for social control ? The task is achieved merely by making people despise each other. Divided we fall.
Me and my mates are being
Me and my mates are being forced to undergo these medical assessments, by the private company ATOS. I know peeps who have been on indefinite awards of the Disability Living Allowance, and are still very unwell, who have had their benefits reviewed and arbitrarily withdrawn. The social work staff who work with them, are amazed.
They want us to sign on the dole, and chase non-existent jobs, or or else be put on placements, where we wrok for dole or Employment Support Allowance.
Yeah, the bastards are demonizing and attacking us, like the poster above said. And yeah, divided we fall.
I want to see a really militant campaign against these bastards. Working-class claimants, and all working-class people, should meet this head on, and protest outside of Atos office and the DWP, and tell them loudly to fuck the hell off.
I'm afraid it would take a
I'm afraid it would take a little bit more than just a militant protest. This is a campaign going long way now, and directed against everybody who needs the society to help. This is an ideology that tracks back for decades and I'm not sure how you deal with people who cheer for these measures because they are convinced that all claimants are just "workshy lefty scum" with no justification for any allowance or benefits.
Sometimes blowing up the social relationship helps only, I'm afraid
soc wrote: I'm afraid it
soc
Yeah, I kind of realized it needs just a little bit more than a militant protest. But people under attack from these harsh benefit regimes, need to get together and organize and campaign. And from little acorns, do tall oaks grow... ;) :rb:
Its also worth mentioning
Its also worth mentioning that benefit fraud and error detection is a big big industry. It has always suffered from the fact that agencies are often detecting their own errors, a surefire recipe for endemic corruption.
While seperate 'private' agencies are on paper less corrupt than that,they are still going to be 'paid on results' ad in practice they are of course decidedly interlinked with the wider DWP/HMRC framework anyway.
fun reading
http://www.fraudanderrorconference.co.uk/programme.php
http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/tackling-fraud-and-error.pdf