Baroness Hollis, a Labour peer, said recently there was a danger that in some areas the poor would end up fighting each other for increasingly scarce resources, rather like the boys in William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies'.
In my neighbouring local authority area they got a Home Office award last year for encouraging them to do exactly that. Strapped for cash as they were, they found the funds to commission some striking 'Know a cheat in your street' posters (with a cheetah on - geddit?) targeting benefit and tenancy fraud, and splashed them on billboards and bus stops all over town, even picking up the theme on the reverse of car park tickets.
They're clearly so proud of the campaign that they've had some nice fresh ones printed and plastered them all around the city again, and while it probably isn't a deliberate move to stop anyone feeling too sorry for the benefit claimants who are suddenly going to have to find 30% of their Council Tax from April, pay 'bedroom tax' or face eviction and contend with numerous other cuts and challenges this year, the timing is, to say the least, unfortunate.
With just about the entire UK media in full hue and cry against benefit claimants in general and Government rhetoric more vicious and poisonous than anything from Thatcher's time, I honestly find it incredible that a cash-strapped council, which already knows that Government cuts are going to take millions of pounds out of the pockets of its poorest citizens, has made campaigning against benefit fraud a priority. The odds are, unless the city in question is a long way out of step with the national average, that there's a much bigger amount of benefit to be claimed legitimately currently not being paid to its citizens than being pocketed dishonestly.
I must make one thing very clear, or I will run the risk of being accused of being 'soft' on benefit fraud or even of supporting it as a kind of jolly Robin-Hoodery. I'm not, and it isn't. It is a crime and it isn't a victimless one; every £1 lost to benefit fraud is £1 potentially lost to public services elsewhere. Where someone is guilty of benefit fraud, and we're talking about making a claim on the basis of deliberately false or incomplete information, or knowingly withholding information that would reduce their entitlement, they should face penalties on a par with other perpetrators of financial crime, but naturally with their 'mitigating circumstances' - which will be a longer list for many this year - taken into account, as they are for all criminal cases.
But they don't. Our local paper seem much better at snapping a photo of the convicted 'benefit cheat' leaving Court than if it's a VAT fraudster or even a dishonest bank clerk swindling a pensioner (both recent stories), when there's 'naming and shaming' but no picture for the rogues' gallery. And those who sneer do so like to be personally abusive about benefit claimants' physical appearance. Though most are quite incapable of recognising, or couldn't care less, about the risk of a serious miscarriage of justice. When a woman accused of benefit fraud was charged on the basis of incorrectly calculated figures from the DWP - no less than three times the true sum overpaid - there was neither press nor public outrage even though, but for the diligence of her defence, she would have gone to prison if convicted on the original figures. That, surely, is a scandal? Apparently not.
In the current climate, it must be all-but impossible for anyone accused of benefit fraud to get a fair trial, especially a jury trial. Cases are often bundled into Court ahead of tribunal hearings, so considered by magistrates, judges and jurors with no specialist knowledge of Social Security regulations but years of negative stereotypes clouding their judgement. Many defence solicitors and barristers see these as lost causes and go for a 'guilty' plea and mitigation even where there is a case that no fraud was ever intended; perhaps, in view of the above, they are right? And while there remains Legal Aid for the criminal case, it's about to vanish for specialist advice for appeals, so even more accused claimants will enter Court without having received specialist benefits advice, or having their case considered by an expert tribunal first.
So where is the massive benefit take-up campaign that ought to be the answer to these cuts? Where are the posters asking 'Is your neighbour missing out on Tax Credits?' and 'Disabled? Claim DLA while there's still time'? It seems there isn't one; presumably, no-one at the Home Office is handing out prizes for that. Worse, while the information leaflet the council are sending out with their Council Tax billing information finds room for a full page reproduction of the 'cheetah' poster, it has the affrontery to ask claimants to let them know if they are entitled to the 'severe disability premium' and thus potential entitlement to Council Tax Support based on 100% of their Council Tax. It completely fails to even give a clue as to how you might know this - where you might find the information if you get it already (ie the calculation sheet for another means-tested benefit), what the qualifying conditions are...
And as I explained in a previous post: http://raggedskirt.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/postcode-lottery.html the 'severe disability premium' isn't even a measure of severe disability. So surely the 'cheetah' page could have been put to much better use? But 'benefit take-up' of Council Tax Support is no longer in a council's own financial interest, with the bill having to be met from their own budget. Sadly, it pays them to have the poor - especially the 'severely disabled' poor - uninformed.
