Old News

I've been off on my travels for the last few weeks, and with so much national news breaking on the 'omnishambles' of ESA and PIP, it might seem a strange choice to resume this blog with a story from a very local paper on an issue I have tackled many times before - in fact, you could even say I wrote the book* on it.

The reason I want to examine this particular article is that it is an text-book example of all that is wrong with the reporting of benefit issues and particular the coverage of benefit fraud.  The whole story is here:
http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/3-234-benefit-cheats-shopped-neighbours-Stoke/story-21164292-detail/story.html

Let's start with the source.  I think we can fairly assume this is drawn heavily from a press release from the Local Authority, who are inordinately proud of their 'Know a Cheat on your Street' campaign.  It's easy to slate the papers and broadcasters for their quality of reporting on Social Security issues, but the root cause of a bad report is often misinformation from the Government - and there are clear parallels here.  Even if you agree that precious funds from a self-confessed 'cash-strapped' authority need spending on telling people benefit fraud is wrong when we have most of the main-stream media in full hue-and-cry against claimants as a whole (and I continue to maintain that many 'frauds' would be avoided if people knew the full extent of what they could legitimately claim), the way statistics are misused by the Council here suggests they have been taking figure-fiddling lessons from IDS and the DWP.

Whoever wrote the headline and that catchy opener "More than 3,000 benefit cheats have been shopped by their neighbours in just two years – after ripping off the cash-strapped city council to the tune of £1.8 million..." - the Council's press officer or the journalist - it's a disgraceful misrepresentation, as the very next line confirms:

"Figures show Stoke-on-Trent City Council received 1,777 fraud tip-offs in 2012/13 and a further 1,457 in 2013/14."  My italics, and I'm sure you can see why - our headline 'benefit cheats' are actually alleged cheats.  This is akin to a police report which categorised everyone questioned over a period of time as a 'criminal'.  We have no idea how many of these were disregarded at first contact as rubbish or were multiple reports relating to the same person.  In short, these figures are completely meaningless - even as an indication of the prevalence of nosy, grudgy neighbours.

The report breaks these 'tips offs' down as:

"888 people who were investigated after failing to tell the authorities they were living with a partner;

"744 people suspected of tenancy fraud such as illegal sub-letting, lying about circumstances to claim accommodation, or leaving council homes empty;

"107 residents accused of not paying the correct amount of council tax;

"39 drivers allegedly wrongly using blue badges. 

Only the first and a proportion of the third of these categories are matters of benefit fraud at all.  Compare these figures for actual action taken from a little later in the same article:

"A total of 359 people's benefits were stopped immediately over the two years saving taxpayers £25,848.

"Twenty-nine cheats had their single person council tax discount cancelled saving £7,946.

"And finally, 139 fraudsters who wrongly claimed a council house were kicked out which is estimated to save £834,000 based on an average £1,000 rental income per month for six months. 

So the number of people being overpaid benefits is a tenth of that headline figure - and we might reasonably assume too that not all of those were guilty of deliberate 'fraud'. 

If you read on, you find that to be true.  "Overall, in 2013/14, 76 people were prosecuted for fraud, 27 received administrative penalties and 68 were formally cautioned."

So we've gone from a headline of '3234 Benefit Cheats shopped...' to 171 people actually facing prosecution or a penalty suggestive of wrong-doing; admittedly, the second figure is for one year not two, but even if we assume as many waiting for their day in Court as dealt with, we find we're still only at 342 - and again, not all of these for benefit-related offences.

Three weeks earlier, the same paper ran an almost identical story with a similar headline looking at the 2013/14 campaign, but with slightly more nuanced statistics: it's here:

http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/1-000-benefits-cheats-shopped-neighbours-Stoke/story-21078066-detail/story.html 

In this we read that, "Between April 2013 and March 2014, a total of 1,457 people were reported to Stoke-on-Trent City Council, accused of fraud. Of that figure, 963 were shopped for allegedly cheating on their benefits, while 494 were unrelated to benefit fraud."

So we have a clear statement - also we must assume from the Council's press office - that over a third of reports in 2013/14 were 'unrelated to benefit fraud'.  So why in the later report is this inconvenient truth ignored as getting in the way of a nice Daily Maily headline, and who authorised this deception?  Is it any wonder the the public's perception of the extent of benefit fraud is so far wide of the mark?  In case you've missed the numbers for this, the public perception is of a fraud rate of about a quarter of all claims - the reality is only 0.7% of payments are on fraudulent claims.  No wonder so many false accusations appear to be flooding in.

And, looking at what we might reasonably expect from a free, investigative press, is anyone asking the Council about the cost in staff time of investigating what appears to be a very high proportion of groundless or malicious allegations, and what the consequences have been for the victims of these?  Or what steps are being taken to investigate contractors and consultants?  After all, the first article also stated that: "Nationally, the annual loss to local authorities from non-benefit fraud is £2.1 billion, while £350 million is lost to benefit fraud."

Instead, the story is always 'benefit fraud' - but unlike the politicians and the papers, at least I make it clear when I'm writing fiction.

* That's this one: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Severe-Discomfort-Social-Insecurity-Honeysett-ebook/dp/B00C69HMRM/ref=la_B00CGNAZXQ_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403427936&sr=1-5 
The Kindle version is free to download today.