Re: divided our society ?
 

When I applied for DLA I was initially refused. During the appeal process I turned to an advisor that helped me give the correct responses to be awarded the benefit, it wasn't fraud but one has to know how to respond to the DWP or people with legitimate claims get turned down. Hearing people giving each other advise on how to fill out claims for benefits doesn't necessarily mean there's fraud.

The budget of the DWP is about £130bn (last time i checked) and fraud counted for about £1.6bn of that. It's a problem yes, but it's not prolific.

We've also got to bear in mind that once you've been unemployed for a while it gets a lot harder to get back into work. Employers are very picky and the job market is currently going to be expanding due to thousands of redundant government employees hitting the jobs market looking for work, that's going to make it even harder to long term unemployed to get a job.

Some people are just plain, unemployable. I'd rather risk someone getting welfare that doesn't need it than someone who does not getting it.

Re: divided our society ?
 

most fraud goes undetected so the figure of £1.6 bn is a nonsense ,it is a guess based on the amount of people who have been caught .You can bet your bottom dollar that it will be closer to double that at the least .Remember that welfare fraud is a way of getting money without being caught and some people are very good at it

Re: divided our society ?
 

martyh but you are simply guessing yourself.

whilst there will be some undetected fraud its also worth noting legit claimants get wrongfully turned down due to very strict rules in place. not to mention the amount of people who simply dont claim because they dont want the stigma.

Re: divided our society ?
 

Statistics page 2

Re: divided our society ?
 

point of showing stats?

Re: divided our society ?
 

If it's undetected then how do you know about it ?

Re: divided our society ?
 

very true all figures regarding fraud are a guess ,my assumption that it is closer to double is just that ,an assumption. My point being that saying that it is not prolific is wrong ,it should be treated as prolific as no-one knows the full extent of the problem .

Re: divided our society ?
 

The extent of the issue/challenge, perhaps.

We appear to have 1 in 20 of the population claiming some type of DLA, and 1 in 24 claiming some form of incapacity benefit.

Re: divided our society ?
 

If we just look at the employment force which is about 30 million, just over 10%

Re: divided our society ?
 

because i'm not naive enough to believe that it doesn't happen ,also any government figures on fraud will be used to either prove they have control of the system or to prove that people abuse it so they can justify cuts in the system either way the figures are just guess work

Re: divided our society ?
 

well no, it should be treated as is, you dont use a ak47 to kill a fly. your approach is the reason why we have vulnerable people now been turned down.

if you think its a prolific problem then prove it. otherwise it is just your point of view it is prolific. Of course when I say wrongfully turned down by that I also meant those people could wrongfully be counted as fraud depending on how they got turned down. So there will be variations both ways on the figures so best to just go on whats reported.

---------- Post added at 12:30 ---------- Previous post was at 12:26 ----------

DLA isnt a unemployment benefit it is worth noting that.

I dont think the seemingly high DLA claimant rate is anything to do with fraud but rather the assessment process. 1 in 20 people with ongoing illnesses isnt too surprising to me in itself, I am not in cloud cuckoo land where I think been ill is rare.

What about the amount of child benefit claimants? I expect that to be a very high number and that is not a problem?

Re: divided our society ?
 

The figures reflect detected fraud, yes. It's fair to assume that not all fraud is detected. Undetected fraud can't directly be quantified but even it it's 100% that of what's detected, it's still going to be 2.5% of DWP spending.

Re: divided our society ?
 

Given that the soft approach has resulted in record claimants of all benefits ..and there are about 50 types of benefit iirc,i think it's time for the ak47 :)

Also it must be considered that the different types of fraud ,such as gyro stops ,working cash in hand ,not declaring hours worked are a lot harder to detect than the more blatant types

Re: divided our society ?
 

To elucidate what others are spout err saying...;)

Re: divided our society ?
 

what soft approach?

there is some weird assumption been made that if claimant numbers are going up it means fraud must be going up.