By Will Horwitz
Cameron’s blustering attack on people committing benefit fraud yesterday highlighted the growing gap between Iain Duncan Smith’s increasingly nuanced line on the issue and the rest of government’s determination to milk the potential of a ‘government cracks down on benefit cheats’ headline for all it’s worth.
After much concerted lobbying from Community Links, as part of our Need not Greed campaign, we were delighted to see DWP’s 21st Century Welfare paper include the paragraph:
“As a result [of the complexity of the benefits system] working legitimately is not a rational choice for many poor people to make. Fraud is always wrong, but we must recognise that the benefits system is making matters worse by pushing valuable work, and the aspiration that this can engender, underground.”
This complexity in the system also ensures that twice as much is lost each year in error as is lost to fraud. Tackling these real problems within the system will ultimately be far more successful at bringing down the welfare bill than pandering to prejudice against benefit claimants.
[...] for reforming the benefits system is that it acts as a barrier to people getting jobs and can drag people into fraud. It seems wrong, and ultimately destructive, to introduce harsher sanctions for these long before [...]
[...] but might lack the skills, contacts, or opportunity to work formally. Particularly since the DWP itself admits that the benefits system can often act as a significant barrier to moving off [...]
It’s not helped by the attitude that working itself is the fraud while claiming benefits is the OK thing. The old adverts claimed “we know where benefit fraud is being committed” and showed people at cash-in-hand or casual labour. Nope. The fraud was being committed at the benefits office.
But it’s right as well that people who want to get ahead but aren’t sure if it will all work out are awfully tempted to break the rules a bit. I’m far more sympathetic to the claimants who are trying to work than to the system that makes that difficult and financially risky.
But I’m not sympathetic to fraudsters who are milking housing benefit in particular.