Government’s latest wearily predictable spate of bullying the most vulnerable in society for cheap political gain – or ‘cracking down on benefit fraud’ as they prefer to call it – is as tiresome and damaging as ever.
As many have already pointed out, the £5.2bn figure being bandied around is for fraud and error, with error (£3.7bn) far outweighing fraud (£1.5bn). Cameron would claim he has said that all along, but his spin has been enough to deceive the Telegraph, who this morning were claiming that “Mr Cameron discloses that £5.2billion of the £87billion welfare budget is lost to fraudulent claims for tax credit and welfare, while administrative error wastes £1.6billion.”
Secondly, the latest figures I have (for 2006/7) show that 6,756 were successfully prosecuted, a further 12,000 were cautioned, 10,000 received an administrative penalty, 95,000 had their benefit changed but weren’t deemed to have done anything serious enough to warrant any kind of sanction, leaving an enormous 196,000 people who experienced a hugely stressful investigation and were found to have done nothing wrong.
We regularly talk to terrified people who are about to be hauled in front of a Jobcentre advisor and quizzed about their claim. Their only source of income is at risk – that five minute interview could mean the difference between scraping by and being plunge into destitution. And they might only be there because a neighbour has fallen out with them and phoned the benefit fraud hotline, or they had a bit of paint on their hands at their last interview. These advisors, don’t forget, are the same people who are supposed to be supporting people into work.
Even those who are defrauding the system usually do so out of need, not greed – scraping together enough for Christmas or paying for repair of a boiler through a bit of informal work, for example. The structural problems with the benefits system that Iain Duncan Smith has identified, the ones which make it very hard to get into work and render the system so complex it borders on incomprehensible, must shoulder the blame for all the error and most of the fraud. The few cases of blatant greed make the headlines, but don’t reflect the reality for people we see.
If I was Iain Duncan Smith this morning, I would be annoyed. His plans for welfare reform might be uncosted so far and might never make it past the Treasury, but they do represent a thoughtful and detailed attempt to address some of the more nuanced problems with the benefits system. Cameron’s announcement today, on the other hand, is crude, callous politics of the very worst kind – the age-old trick of bullying those least able to defend themselves to unite the rest in opposition. It’s a trick every government tries, usually with asylum seekers, poor migrants, and benefit claimants.
Before he became party leader, Cameron visited Community Links. The invitation is always open should he wish to return. But if he does so, I’ll make sure he spends a day behind the desk at our New Deal project – the most successful in London and the South East – talking to our advisors about the reality of being on benefits and looking for work. Hopefully he’d think twice before picking on people again.
Lastly, as many people have pointed out, don’t forget about the £70bn in tax evaded each year. Cameron said today that, ‘at a time when we’re having to take such difficult decisions about how to cut back without damaging the things that matter the most, we should strain every sinew to cut error, waste and fraud…’ in the tax system?
UPDATE: My colleague has pointed out the following line from DWP’s 21st Century Welfare paper last week:
“As a result, 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.”
Perhaps someone should tell Cameron…
