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.
Wednesday, 13 March 2013
Wednesday, 6 March 2013
Postcode Lottery
Over the past couple of days I have been delivering training on the new 'Council Tax Reduction Schemes' that Local Authorities are in the process of devising ready for the replacement of the current national Council Tax Benefit scheme in April 2013. This situation has been foisted on them by Central Government - for reasons best known to themselves, but which must surely include a pathological hatred of benefit claimants and poor cities from the inevitable consequences - who have decided that this coming finacial year Local Authorities will have the discretion to devise their own schemes for working-age claimants, but must protect the entitlement of people over Pension Credit age.
But they will have to deliver this from a budget reduced by 10% from current expenditure on Council Tax Benefit in their area.
I have already explained in my post 'Poll Tax Reloaded' how this has a disproportionate effect on Councils where more Council Tax payers are reliant on benefit. It is also the case that working-age claimants in a district with a high proportion of poorer pensioners are also likely to take a harder hit on their own entitlement, since all of the cut must come from the younger claimants' benefits. Factor in Councils' social and economic policies, and councillors' and officers' preferences, prejudices and misunderstandings, and we are left with getting on for 300 different schemes across the country, with some subsidising the benefit budget to protect their less well-off residents and the businesses and communities dependent on their spending power, and others being altogether less far-sighted or charitable.
Locally, I looked at our five nearest Councils. An attempt to create a county-wide framework collapsed, and instead there are wild variations between neighbouring authorities. The majority of working-age claimants in Stoke-on-Trent will pay at least 30% of their Council Tax even from what are supposed to be merely subsistence benefits such as Income Support and Jobseekers Allowance. In neighbouring Staffordshire Moorlands, the figure is 8.5% for someone in the same circumstances. Stafford Borough appears to have tried to be 'family friendly', allowing families with children under five potentially a maximum 100% benefit if their incomes are low enough, but promptly undermined this by taking both child benefit and child maintenance into account in full as income where it is generally disregarded, a move that will hit working lone parents especially hard.
One especially frustrating feature of several schemes is their insistence of using eligibility for an element of means-tested benefit calculations called the 'severe disability premium' (SDP) to define severe disability, and give entitlement to a potential 100% reduction. It sounds to the lay person as if that is what it might define, but it actually does no such thing. To be entitled to a 'severe disability premium' in the calculation of your benefit, you must meet three conditions. Firstly, you need to qualify for Disability Living Allowance at the middle or higher rate for care - arguably, a reasonable measure of severe disability. But the other two qualifying criteria are not. For the SDP, you must also 'live alone' (although certain other disabled people, children and young people in your household are ignored) and not have a carer claiming Carers Allowance for looking after you. These latter criteria are clearly about household composition and care provision, not the extent of your disabilities.
The consequence of adopting this benchmark is iniquitous. You might have two people living next door to each other in identical properties, with identical health problems, both entitled to DLA at the higher rate for care and receiving identical earnings-replacement benefits. One has a single regular carer who claims Carers Allowance as his/her main income: the other has two carers who share the role, so neither provides sufficient hours of care to qualify for Carers Allowance. The first claimant doesn't qualify for a 'severe disability premium' and so can receive no more than 70% or 80% of their Council Tax bill in benefit, no matter how poor. The other, simply on account of having different arrangements to provide the same level of care, can receive up to 100%.
Logically, if the intention was to devise a scheme to protect the entitlement of severely disabled people, you would link it to receipt of given components of DLA - or rather, if you knew anything about benefits, that's what you would tend to do. Sadly, even this botched attempt to give some protection to disabled people is more than some Councils have resolved to provide.
Similarly, elements of the Discretionary Social Fund are also transfering to Local Authorities in April, also with a slice of funding based on current expenditure. While Stoke have produced some broad principles, we are still waiting for any clue as to what the County Council have in mind for this, so it is too soon to do a detailed critique.
What I can say from looking at both Council Tax Support/Reduction schemes and 'son-of-Social Fund' is that there is a disturbing trend here towards the localisation of Social Security provision, which if not checked may lead to area rates for all Social Security Benefits, potentially decided locally, possibly with discretion even not to provide them at all - the Social Fund budget for Councils isn't ring-fenced, for example, and some Councils may opt to use the funds elsewhere. Hard-pressed districts will struggle to provide for their poorest citizens, even where they have the political will to do so. In privileged districts the plight of the 'undeserving poor' may be left increasingly to the well-intentioned, under-funded and occasionally judgmental sphere of charities and churches. This may lead to a 'race to the bottom' to keep provision at the bare minimum required in law, to deter long-term claimants who know their job prospects are poor from moving to areas seen as a 'soft touch'.
That's hardly the spirit of 1945.
But they will have to deliver this from a budget reduced by 10% from current expenditure on Council Tax Benefit in their area.
I have already explained in my post 'Poll Tax Reloaded' how this has a disproportionate effect on Councils where more Council Tax payers are reliant on benefit. It is also the case that working-age claimants in a district with a high proportion of poorer pensioners are also likely to take a harder hit on their own entitlement, since all of the cut must come from the younger claimants' benefits. Factor in Councils' social and economic policies, and councillors' and officers' preferences, prejudices and misunderstandings, and we are left with getting on for 300 different schemes across the country, with some subsidising the benefit budget to protect their less well-off residents and the businesses and communities dependent on their spending power, and others being altogether less far-sighted or charitable.
Locally, I looked at our five nearest Councils. An attempt to create a county-wide framework collapsed, and instead there are wild variations between neighbouring authorities. The majority of working-age claimants in Stoke-on-Trent will pay at least 30% of their Council Tax even from what are supposed to be merely subsistence benefits such as Income Support and Jobseekers Allowance. In neighbouring Staffordshire Moorlands, the figure is 8.5% for someone in the same circumstances. Stafford Borough appears to have tried to be 'family friendly', allowing families with children under five potentially a maximum 100% benefit if their incomes are low enough, but promptly undermined this by taking both child benefit and child maintenance into account in full as income where it is generally disregarded, a move that will hit working lone parents especially hard.
One especially frustrating feature of several schemes is their insistence of using eligibility for an element of means-tested benefit calculations called the 'severe disability premium' (SDP) to define severe disability, and give entitlement to a potential 100% reduction. It sounds to the lay person as if that is what it might define, but it actually does no such thing. To be entitled to a 'severe disability premium' in the calculation of your benefit, you must meet three conditions. Firstly, you need to qualify for Disability Living Allowance at the middle or higher rate for care - arguably, a reasonable measure of severe disability. But the other two qualifying criteria are not. For the SDP, you must also 'live alone' (although certain other disabled people, children and young people in your household are ignored) and not have a carer claiming Carers Allowance for looking after you. These latter criteria are clearly about household composition and care provision, not the extent of your disabilities.
The consequence of adopting this benchmark is iniquitous. You might have two people living next door to each other in identical properties, with identical health problems, both entitled to DLA at the higher rate for care and receiving identical earnings-replacement benefits. One has a single regular carer who claims Carers Allowance as his/her main income: the other has two carers who share the role, so neither provides sufficient hours of care to qualify for Carers Allowance. The first claimant doesn't qualify for a 'severe disability premium' and so can receive no more than 70% or 80% of their Council Tax bill in benefit, no matter how poor. The other, simply on account of having different arrangements to provide the same level of care, can receive up to 100%.
Logically, if the intention was to devise a scheme to protect the entitlement of severely disabled people, you would link it to receipt of given components of DLA - or rather, if you knew anything about benefits, that's what you would tend to do. Sadly, even this botched attempt to give some protection to disabled people is more than some Councils have resolved to provide.
Similarly, elements of the Discretionary Social Fund are also transfering to Local Authorities in April, also with a slice of funding based on current expenditure. While Stoke have produced some broad principles, we are still waiting for any clue as to what the County Council have in mind for this, so it is too soon to do a detailed critique.
What I can say from looking at both Council Tax Support/Reduction schemes and 'son-of-Social Fund' is that there is a disturbing trend here towards the localisation of Social Security provision, which if not checked may lead to area rates for all Social Security Benefits, potentially decided locally, possibly with discretion even not to provide them at all - the Social Fund budget for Councils isn't ring-fenced, for example, and some Councils may opt to use the funds elsewhere. Hard-pressed districts will struggle to provide for their poorest citizens, even where they have the political will to do so. In privileged districts the plight of the 'undeserving poor' may be left increasingly to the well-intentioned, under-funded and occasionally judgmental sphere of charities and churches. This may lead to a 'race to the bottom' to keep provision at the bare minimum required in law, to deter long-term claimants who know their job prospects are poor from moving to areas seen as a 'soft touch'.
That's hardly the spirit of 1945.
Friday, 22 February 2013
Pride and Pensioners
I was far from surprised to read yesterday of evidence that an increasing number of retired people are failing to claim the benefits to which they are lawfully entitled.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2013/feb/21/pensioners-state-benefits-failing-to-claim
If true - and the survey is relatively small - this is sad news. Benefit underpayment is the unsung scandal of these tough times, while apparently endless column inches can be found for overpayment and fraud tales; more disturbingly, this suggests the current generation of pensioners are at least as conscious of a stigma attached to Social Security Benefits as the previous one.
Almost twenty years ago I started work for a Home Improvement Agency, a project assisting older and disabled people to arrange repairs and adaptations to their homes. Part of my role was to check benefit entitlement, and then to advise and assist with claims where appropriate. A successful claim for a qualifying benefit might lead to entitlement to free energy efficiency work, grants for minor repairs and reduced contributions to the costs of larger projects, so much more than extra weekly income was at stake. Despite this, I would often struggle to persuade clients that making a claim was the right thing to do. Even the elderly woman who couldn't afford to switch the heating elements of her electric fire on, but had the light on for the illusion of a warming glow, needed patiently reassuring that there was nothing shameful in claiming Council Tax Benefit and Attendance Allowance.
'Means-tested' was a phrase to be avoided at all costs, even if what you were advising them to claim was a means-tested benefit. But these were the children of people who, if they fell on hard times, might have had their homes inspected to ensure they hadn't frittered funds away on luxuries and trivialities, before some well-meaning but judgmental middle-class inspector awarded them emergency relief. Their own children, raised with the Welfare State and the promise of support from the cradle to the grave are now pensioners and should be able to stand clear of the shadow of the workhouse, but for some reason the reticence to claim lives on.
There appear to be several barriers. The complexity of the benefits system hinders many people identifying their entitlement, regardless of age, but I believe there's more to it with older people. It probably doesn't help that, according to the papers' own figures, 74% of Daily Mail and 76% of Daily Express readers are aged over 45, with the Express giving it's over 65s readership as 40% and the average age of its readers as 59. So in the run-up to and years of retirement, these poor misguided souls exist on a diet of shirkers and scroungers stories, often contrasting these 'undeserving' characters with 'our pensioners' stoically coping with hardship. Today, for example, the DM has a suitably shocking tale combining those twin evils of benefit claiming and animal cruelty while the DE continues to focus its self-righteous malice on a woman 'on benefits' with eleven children.
And day after day, you'll find the same. Our 'local rag' from the Mail's stable, has already run three stories about an alleged benefit fraudster before her case has even concluded, though doubtless it's pure coincidence that the woman in question is black, of non-UK nationality and has a potentially amusing surname for trolls to mock. Another story concerning a pensioner still delivering the aforementioned 'local rag' well into her eighties predictably attracts comments contrasting her to 'lazy workshy youngsters' - exactly what it was intended to do, I suggest.
For all their best efforts to combat these attitudes, organisations like Citizens Advice, Age UK, Disability Alliance and the Pensioners Convention are fighting an unequal battle against such a hostile press. Their reasoned voices will always be drowned out by tabloid hysteria from those same papers who will point the finger of blame at Social Workers, Civil Servants and Modern Society in general every time a 'poor but proud' older person dies from hypothermia, without asking if perhaps their 'independence good: benefits bad' message wasn't at least equally to blame.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2013/feb/21/pensioners-state-benefits-failing-to-claim
If true - and the survey is relatively small - this is sad news. Benefit underpayment is the unsung scandal of these tough times, while apparently endless column inches can be found for overpayment and fraud tales; more disturbingly, this suggests the current generation of pensioners are at least as conscious of a stigma attached to Social Security Benefits as the previous one.
Almost twenty years ago I started work for a Home Improvement Agency, a project assisting older and disabled people to arrange repairs and adaptations to their homes. Part of my role was to check benefit entitlement, and then to advise and assist with claims where appropriate. A successful claim for a qualifying benefit might lead to entitlement to free energy efficiency work, grants for minor repairs and reduced contributions to the costs of larger projects, so much more than extra weekly income was at stake. Despite this, I would often struggle to persuade clients that making a claim was the right thing to do. Even the elderly woman who couldn't afford to switch the heating elements of her electric fire on, but had the light on for the illusion of a warming glow, needed patiently reassuring that there was nothing shameful in claiming Council Tax Benefit and Attendance Allowance.
'Means-tested' was a phrase to be avoided at all costs, even if what you were advising them to claim was a means-tested benefit. But these were the children of people who, if they fell on hard times, might have had their homes inspected to ensure they hadn't frittered funds away on luxuries and trivialities, before some well-meaning but judgmental middle-class inspector awarded them emergency relief. Their own children, raised with the Welfare State and the promise of support from the cradle to the grave are now pensioners and should be able to stand clear of the shadow of the workhouse, but for some reason the reticence to claim lives on.
There appear to be several barriers. The complexity of the benefits system hinders many people identifying their entitlement, regardless of age, but I believe there's more to it with older people. It probably doesn't help that, according to the papers' own figures, 74% of Daily Mail and 76% of Daily Express readers are aged over 45, with the Express giving it's over 65s readership as 40% and the average age of its readers as 59. So in the run-up to and years of retirement, these poor misguided souls exist on a diet of shirkers and scroungers stories, often contrasting these 'undeserving' characters with 'our pensioners' stoically coping with hardship. Today, for example, the DM has a suitably shocking tale combining those twin evils of benefit claiming and animal cruelty while the DE continues to focus its self-righteous malice on a woman 'on benefits' with eleven children.
And day after day, you'll find the same. Our 'local rag' from the Mail's stable, has already run three stories about an alleged benefit fraudster before her case has even concluded, though doubtless it's pure coincidence that the woman in question is black, of non-UK nationality and has a potentially amusing surname for trolls to mock. Another story concerning a pensioner still delivering the aforementioned 'local rag' well into her eighties predictably attracts comments contrasting her to 'lazy workshy youngsters' - exactly what it was intended to do, I suggest.
For all their best efforts to combat these attitudes, organisations like Citizens Advice, Age UK, Disability Alliance and the Pensioners Convention are fighting an unequal battle against such a hostile press. Their reasoned voices will always be drowned out by tabloid hysteria from those same papers who will point the finger of blame at Social Workers, Civil Servants and Modern Society in general every time a 'poor but proud' older person dies from hypothermia, without asking if perhaps their 'independence good: benefits bad' message wasn't at least equally to blame.
Wednesday, 13 February 2013
Losing sleep
It doesn't take many minutes of web-surfing to discover that there are huge numbers of people feeling frightened and angry about one of the most notorious measures the present Government have introduced as part of their 'Welfare Reform' agenda, namely the so-called 'Bedroom Tax'.
Although that's a catchy expression, 'Bedroom Tax' is somewhat misleading as what we're actually talking about isn't a tax at all; the 'under-occupation penalty' is a reduction in Housing Benefit entitlement set to affect tenants in Social Housing from April.
The Government's justification for introducing the measure, which will reduce entitlement by 14% of eligible rent for one additional bedroom and 25% for two, is that firstly, it will control the spiralling cost of Housing Benefit and secondly, it will make better use of the limited supply of Social Housing available. Naturally, being a measure from the ConDems, it will do this by putting various poor and vulnerable families through months of uncertainty, additional financial hardship and misery - and in many cases throw them out of the homes they've occupied for decades -rather than tackling the root causes of either problem. They'll also be giving Housing Associations and Councils who still own and manage housing stock an almighty headache as they attempt to shuffle their tenants into small enough properties to avoid the 'Bedroom Tax' and when they fail (which they will, because most have 'too many' larger properties and 'too few' small ones) they'll have an even bigger headache dealing with rent arrears and the grim prospect of evicting the very people it was their mission to help and house.
And Local Authorities, who administer Housing Benefit, will end up looking the villain of the piece, whereas if the Government had waited to tie these changes in with the introduction of Universal Credit, the DWP would have carried the can and the buck would have stopped more sharply at No 10.
I'm not going to run through a long, detailed list of the type of people likely to suffer as a consequence as those with the most plaintive and, at least from a media perspective, 'deserving' stories are already finding their way into the press. But we're talking about disabled people needing rooms for special equipment or for carers to stay in during bad times, separated parents who aren't the principal carer for their children, families with grown up kids working away from home on short-term contracts, and more mundane situations, such as couples who want a bedroom each because one (or both) snores like a jumbo jet taking off. But you'll see plenty of similar cases in your local paper soon enough.
Before I go on, I'm going to take a brief moment to remind readers that, contrary to the impression given by Government ministers and the usual suspects in the press, Housing Benefit is paid to working people on low incomes and not just people out of work. Just in case you're still swallowing the shirkers/strivers rhetoric. I'm sure you're not. What I'm going to try to do is debunk the Government's argument about 'fairness' and parity with the private sector, and suggest some logical alternatives.
Firstly, the myth that this simply brings provision for Social Housing tenants into line with that for people in the private sector. The only thing the 'Bedroom Tax' has in common with the Local Housing Allowance scheme for private tenancies (introduced by Labour in 2008, but made tougher by the ConDems) is the calculation of how many 'bedrooms' a household requires. There, the similarity ends.
In the private sector, Housing Benefit is paid based on the 'Local Housing Allowance' (LHA) for a property of the size required by the claimant's family or household. This was, when the system was set up, the median price for rented accommodation in any given district, but has subsequently been moved down to reflect the cost of the lowest third of private rented housing, limiting the availability of affordable private rented housing to benefit claimants. Prior to the introduction of LHA, councils were still expected to cap Housing Benefit for private tenants to a level commensurate with the size of property a household required, and set the rent at a rate judged appropriate by a rent officer if it appeared excessive for the type. But it was never utterly inflexible as councils did have the discretion to allow higher payments in exceptional circumstances - for example where a larger property was needed due to disability.
So, private tenants claiming Housing Benefit have limited access to housing due to the level at which LHA is set and also a built-in 'under-occupancy' provision stating how many rooms they need. However, if they are fortunate enough to find a three-bedroomed house or flat for the same price as the LHA for a two-bedroom property in their area, they can receive Housing Benefit based on their full rent. It even used to be the case that if they could track down a property for less than the LHA for the size they required, private tenants could keep up to £15 per week of the difference; but that's gone now, of course, along with any idea that you might actually try to reward benefit claimants for making canny financial decisions. Though to be fair, there was always the risk that what this would actually do was lure poor families into cheap but substandard accommodation, or encourage landlords to set their rents at LHA levels where previously they had been below.
So it's a tough regime for private tenants - especially when you add reduced security of tenure into the mix - and many must look enviously at their peers in Social Housing, especially if they have been shuffling from one shorthold tenancy to the next waiting in vain for a Council or Housing Association allocation to come their way. If you're that family, it's going to look very unfair to you that a couple whose adult children have left home is now living in a three-bedroom Council House all on their own. And maybe it is, but being equally unpleasant to another family is hardly 'fairness' and anyway, the root cause of this 'unfairness' isn't the couple in the Council House, it's the fact that when the people next door to them bought theirs, they got it at a knock-down price and even then the Council couldn't use the proceeds to build a replacement.
Social landlords are not reckless and wasteful with their housing and they have always tried to fit the house to the tenant as best they can. As a Housing Officer in the 1990s I was regularly involved in arranging all-expenses paid moves for willing pensioners from big family houses into retirement bungalows, for example. Much under-occupied housing could be freed up if there was more good-quality, secure, affordable accommodation close to their existing support network for older people though interestingly, doubtless mindful of the bad press persecuting pensioners would get, not to mention the power of the 'grey' vote, pensioners are completely exempt from these 'Bedroom Tax' proposals.
Most tenants don't want a property that's too big for their needs either. It costs more to heat and furnish than something 'just right'. And while there will be squeals of disapproval from some that 'The Public Purse' is paying for the spare bedrooms needed to house children staying with a separated parent, better that perhaps than pick up the less visible but probably higher costs of estrangement and anxiety that are the alternative.
Arguably, then, the problem of excessive Housing Benefit cost solves itself if you allow - indeed fund and encourage - Social Landlords to build the range of housing the communities they serve require, and to buy and renovate existing properties, enabling those who want to to 'downsize' (possibly even providing positive incentives for them to do so, such as assistance with removals and setting up their new utility accounts) and others from the over-priced private sector housing to move into better-value, more secure tenancies. The last time I looked, there were no shortage of contractors willing and able to do this work looking for projects, and tradespeople 'signing on' who could be working, earning and incidently, not claiming Housing Benefit.
Or you could be really radical and introduce rent control back into the private rented sector. Because what you won't get ministers telling you is that a substantial chunk of this 'out-of-control' welfare bill isn't going to the 'shirkers' and 'scroungers', it's actually lining the pockets of landlords and, where the shortage of accommodation is most acute, those pockets are likely to be on some very expensive items of clothing.
Instead, when you confront a minister with the hardship this is going to cause, you get the suggestion that tenants might manage the extra expense - and alleviate the housing crisis - by taking in lodgers. In some cases, that might indeed be a practical proposition, but in plenty of others it's quite impractical (eg. where rooms are needed for visiting carers or children), fraught with complications for benefit entitlement and an outright danger to some vulnerable households. One of the local Councils in this district ran a high profile anti benefit-fraud campaign only last autumn encouraging neighbours to report people they believed were co-habiting - and I'll look at how fine the line can be between sharing a home and 'living together' in a future blog - so that's almost certainly not a sensible tactic if you're single (note that you can be 'living together' in a same-sex relationship).
And if you've read the book which inspired the title of this blog, you'll probably remember what happened to the Eastons when they decided to try and balance their budget by taking in a lodger, who seemed thoroughly decent and respectable, at first...
(SPOILER ALERT - it didn't end well.)
And if you haven't read 'The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists' by Robert Tressell, it's probably time you did!
Although that's a catchy expression, 'Bedroom Tax' is somewhat misleading as what we're actually talking about isn't a tax at all; the 'under-occupation penalty' is a reduction in Housing Benefit entitlement set to affect tenants in Social Housing from April.
The Government's justification for introducing the measure, which will reduce entitlement by 14% of eligible rent for one additional bedroom and 25% for two, is that firstly, it will control the spiralling cost of Housing Benefit and secondly, it will make better use of the limited supply of Social Housing available. Naturally, being a measure from the ConDems, it will do this by putting various poor and vulnerable families through months of uncertainty, additional financial hardship and misery - and in many cases throw them out of the homes they've occupied for decades -rather than tackling the root causes of either problem. They'll also be giving Housing Associations and Councils who still own and manage housing stock an almighty headache as they attempt to shuffle their tenants into small enough properties to avoid the 'Bedroom Tax' and when they fail (which they will, because most have 'too many' larger properties and 'too few' small ones) they'll have an even bigger headache dealing with rent arrears and the grim prospect of evicting the very people it was their mission to help and house.
And Local Authorities, who administer Housing Benefit, will end up looking the villain of the piece, whereas if the Government had waited to tie these changes in with the introduction of Universal Credit, the DWP would have carried the can and the buck would have stopped more sharply at No 10.
I'm not going to run through a long, detailed list of the type of people likely to suffer as a consequence as those with the most plaintive and, at least from a media perspective, 'deserving' stories are already finding their way into the press. But we're talking about disabled people needing rooms for special equipment or for carers to stay in during bad times, separated parents who aren't the principal carer for their children, families with grown up kids working away from home on short-term contracts, and more mundane situations, such as couples who want a bedroom each because one (or both) snores like a jumbo jet taking off. But you'll see plenty of similar cases in your local paper soon enough.
Before I go on, I'm going to take a brief moment to remind readers that, contrary to the impression given by Government ministers and the usual suspects in the press, Housing Benefit is paid to working people on low incomes and not just people out of work. Just in case you're still swallowing the shirkers/strivers rhetoric. I'm sure you're not. What I'm going to try to do is debunk the Government's argument about 'fairness' and parity with the private sector, and suggest some logical alternatives.
Firstly, the myth that this simply brings provision for Social Housing tenants into line with that for people in the private sector. The only thing the 'Bedroom Tax' has in common with the Local Housing Allowance scheme for private tenancies (introduced by Labour in 2008, but made tougher by the ConDems) is the calculation of how many 'bedrooms' a household requires. There, the similarity ends.
In the private sector, Housing Benefit is paid based on the 'Local Housing Allowance' (LHA) for a property of the size required by the claimant's family or household. This was, when the system was set up, the median price for rented accommodation in any given district, but has subsequently been moved down to reflect the cost of the lowest third of private rented housing, limiting the availability of affordable private rented housing to benefit claimants. Prior to the introduction of LHA, councils were still expected to cap Housing Benefit for private tenants to a level commensurate with the size of property a household required, and set the rent at a rate judged appropriate by a rent officer if it appeared excessive for the type. But it was never utterly inflexible as councils did have the discretion to allow higher payments in exceptional circumstances - for example where a larger property was needed due to disability.
So, private tenants claiming Housing Benefit have limited access to housing due to the level at which LHA is set and also a built-in 'under-occupancy' provision stating how many rooms they need. However, if they are fortunate enough to find a three-bedroomed house or flat for the same price as the LHA for a two-bedroom property in their area, they can receive Housing Benefit based on their full rent. It even used to be the case that if they could track down a property for less than the LHA for the size they required, private tenants could keep up to £15 per week of the difference; but that's gone now, of course, along with any idea that you might actually try to reward benefit claimants for making canny financial decisions. Though to be fair, there was always the risk that what this would actually do was lure poor families into cheap but substandard accommodation, or encourage landlords to set their rents at LHA levels where previously they had been below.
So it's a tough regime for private tenants - especially when you add reduced security of tenure into the mix - and many must look enviously at their peers in Social Housing, especially if they have been shuffling from one shorthold tenancy to the next waiting in vain for a Council or Housing Association allocation to come their way. If you're that family, it's going to look very unfair to you that a couple whose adult children have left home is now living in a three-bedroom Council House all on their own. And maybe it is, but being equally unpleasant to another family is hardly 'fairness' and anyway, the root cause of this 'unfairness' isn't the couple in the Council House, it's the fact that when the people next door to them bought theirs, they got it at a knock-down price and even then the Council couldn't use the proceeds to build a replacement.
Social landlords are not reckless and wasteful with their housing and they have always tried to fit the house to the tenant as best they can. As a Housing Officer in the 1990s I was regularly involved in arranging all-expenses paid moves for willing pensioners from big family houses into retirement bungalows, for example. Much under-occupied housing could be freed up if there was more good-quality, secure, affordable accommodation close to their existing support network for older people though interestingly, doubtless mindful of the bad press persecuting pensioners would get, not to mention the power of the 'grey' vote, pensioners are completely exempt from these 'Bedroom Tax' proposals.
Most tenants don't want a property that's too big for their needs either. It costs more to heat and furnish than something 'just right'. And while there will be squeals of disapproval from some that 'The Public Purse' is paying for the spare bedrooms needed to house children staying with a separated parent, better that perhaps than pick up the less visible but probably higher costs of estrangement and anxiety that are the alternative.
Arguably, then, the problem of excessive Housing Benefit cost solves itself if you allow - indeed fund and encourage - Social Landlords to build the range of housing the communities they serve require, and to buy and renovate existing properties, enabling those who want to to 'downsize' (possibly even providing positive incentives for them to do so, such as assistance with removals and setting up their new utility accounts) and others from the over-priced private sector housing to move into better-value, more secure tenancies. The last time I looked, there were no shortage of contractors willing and able to do this work looking for projects, and tradespeople 'signing on' who could be working, earning and incidently, not claiming Housing Benefit.
Or you could be really radical and introduce rent control back into the private rented sector. Because what you won't get ministers telling you is that a substantial chunk of this 'out-of-control' welfare bill isn't going to the 'shirkers' and 'scroungers', it's actually lining the pockets of landlords and, where the shortage of accommodation is most acute, those pockets are likely to be on some very expensive items of clothing.
Instead, when you confront a minister with the hardship this is going to cause, you get the suggestion that tenants might manage the extra expense - and alleviate the housing crisis - by taking in lodgers. In some cases, that might indeed be a practical proposition, but in plenty of others it's quite impractical (eg. where rooms are needed for visiting carers or children), fraught with complications for benefit entitlement and an outright danger to some vulnerable households. One of the local Councils in this district ran a high profile anti benefit-fraud campaign only last autumn encouraging neighbours to report people they believed were co-habiting - and I'll look at how fine the line can be between sharing a home and 'living together' in a future blog - so that's almost certainly not a sensible tactic if you're single (note that you can be 'living together' in a same-sex relationship).
And if you've read the book which inspired the title of this blog, you'll probably remember what happened to the Eastons when they decided to try and balance their budget by taking in a lodger, who seemed thoroughly decent and respectable, at first...
(SPOILER ALERT - it didn't end well.)
And if you haven't read 'The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists' by Robert Tressell, it's probably time you did!
Tuesday, 12 February 2013
Nothing to lose but our chains...?
I had planned to write a blog on the 'bedroom tax' today, but events have overtaken me with the staggeringly good news that Cait Reilly, the geology graduate who challenged a decision that required her to leave her voluntary work at a museum and work unpaid at a Poundland store, or lose her Jobseeker's Allowance, has won her case in the Court of Appeal.
So much was wrong about this. For Miss Reilly, what she was doing voluntarily was self-evidently making her more potentially employable in her field of expertise than stacking shelves and cleaning floors at Poundland. The 'taxpayer' paid Miss Reilly her JSA - so she worked 30 hours for what would have been the legal minimum wage for little more than ten - and Poundland got a 'slave' at the State's expense, arguably giving them unfair commercial advantage over companies not involved in the scheme.
And somewhere out there was a worker who would have been quite happy to work in Poundland - albeit for a fair, living wage - but instead was on JSA and depending on their family circumstances possibly also Housing, Council Tax Benefit and Child Tax Credit, instead of working, paying tax, buying more than the absolute bare essentials and contributing to the economy.
So you've got to hand it to the Court of Appeal - this really is a fantastic judgment.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21426928
It always frightens me when I hear ordinary working people stating that claimants should have to work for their 'dole money', seemingly oblivious to the risk their own job might come under were that to be the case. Hopefully, this shuts down the nasty, grasping schemes run by the A4es of this world and forces the present Government, and future ones of all political shades, to look at genuine job training and job creation.
As Cait Reilly herself put it: "I agree we need to get people back to work but the best way of doing that is by helping them, not punishing them."
So much was wrong about this. For Miss Reilly, what she was doing voluntarily was self-evidently making her more potentially employable in her field of expertise than stacking shelves and cleaning floors at Poundland. The 'taxpayer' paid Miss Reilly her JSA - so she worked 30 hours for what would have been the legal minimum wage for little more than ten - and Poundland got a 'slave' at the State's expense, arguably giving them unfair commercial advantage over companies not involved in the scheme.
And somewhere out there was a worker who would have been quite happy to work in Poundland - albeit for a fair, living wage - but instead was on JSA and depending on their family circumstances possibly also Housing, Council Tax Benefit and Child Tax Credit, instead of working, paying tax, buying more than the absolute bare essentials and contributing to the economy.
So you've got to hand it to the Court of Appeal - this really is a fantastic judgment.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21426928
It always frightens me when I hear ordinary working people stating that claimants should have to work for their 'dole money', seemingly oblivious to the risk their own job might come under were that to be the case. Hopefully, this shuts down the nasty, grasping schemes run by the A4es of this world and forces the present Government, and future ones of all political shades, to look at genuine job training and job creation.
As Cait Reilly herself put it: "I agree we need to get people back to work but the best way of doing that is by helping them, not punishing them."
Thursday, 7 February 2013
Scapegoats
There has been an amusing Facebook post doing the rounds of my friends' pages concerning the recent confirmation that the skeleton found under the car park at Leicester Social Services is indeed most likely that of King Richard III. The joke being that, despite his deformed spine, numerous battle wounds and being dead for more than five hundred years, Atos would still find him 'fit for work' if he were sent to them for a medical. Indeed, I see the Prime Minister was mocked in Parliament with the same witty suggestion only yesterday.
I'm not at all sorry to see Atos finally being subjected to both gallows humour and serious journalistic scrutiny, but Atos are merely a symptom and not the disease. It would be extremely easy for this Government - or the next - to gain a quick fix of good press by unceremoniously terminating their contract at the next unsatisfactory audit of their performance. There would be a collective sigh of relief from many quarters were this to happen, but it would be of only limited benefit - no pun intended - to sick and disabled people.
The grim truth is that the problem with Employment and Support Allowance isn't Atos, it's the Work Capability Assessment for which they are employed to provide evidence. Sure, Atos often do a lamentably poor job of assessing the unfortunate claimants sent to them; in my work as a welfare rights adviser I saw some excruciatingly bad decisions often based on such stupidity as, for example, having a Registered Physiotherapist assigned the task of assessing someone with profound mental health problems. On other occasions, what proported to be a clinical judgment was very clearly influenced by negative value judgments about the claimant, especially where addiction played a part in his or her ill health. There were (and still are) errors, contradictions and outright lies in too many Atos-produced reports. And people have paid the price for this with their lives.
But while eliminating incompetence and unfairly subjective assessments would certainly save a great many seriously ill people the distress and anxiety of losing benefit and/or facing an appeal, and the 'taxpayer' the unnecessary costs of those appeals, it wouldn't leave us with a fair or logical system. The real flaws are within the ESA descriptors and, as with DLA, the sharp edges between entitlement and ineligibility, and between the two 'groups' into which ESA recipients are divided.
Admittedly, ESA does allow some room for the exercise of common sense by retaining an exceptional circumstances clause, allowing a claimant to be deemed unfit for work and unfit for work-related activity if necessary to prevent a serious risk to his or her physical or mental health, or to the physical or mental health of another person. Despite this, ESA remains a blunt instrument. Score 15 or more 'points' and you have 'limited capability for work' and entitlement to ESA. Score fewer and you are 'signing on' for Jobseekers Allowance, potentially even if you have completely lost the use of one arm and hand, or have no vision at all (but can get around familiar places with a guide-dog or cane) or even 'cannot learn anything beyond a simple task, such as setting an alarm clock'. While it would be unreasonable to argue that people with these disabilities are automatically unfit for any work, clearly the very term that describes their prospects is 'limited capability for work' - but in ESA law they have no such thing as these limitations each score a meagre 9 points.
A similar sharp edge divides the 'Work-related Activity Group', who receive a lower rate of benefit and are required to carry out 'work-related activity' as a condition of entitlement, from the more severely disabled and higher paid 'Support Group'. In ESA alone, the difference between the two components is up to £20 per week, but there can be other advantages - for example, in Stoke-on-Trent people in the 'Support Group' will potentially eligible for 100% Council Tax Support, while those in the 'Work-related Activity Group' will generally receive no more than 70%. The intention is to protect the most severely disabled, but the consequence is to put a greater financial burden on those with the lower income.
And the difference between the two groups, rather as with the components of DLA, can be miniscule. A claimant unable to lift a 0.5 litre carton of liquid goes into the Support Group. Someone who can, but couldn't manage to lift something fractionally heavier, does not. It's the Support Group if you have, on a daily basis, uncontrollable episodes of aggressive or disinhibited behaviour that would be unreasonable in any workplace, but although 'frequent' episodes of the same will also score 15 points, that puts you into the Work-related Activity Group. 'Occasional' episodes score 9 points and, unless supplemented by other point-scoring issues, will see you off to the Jobcentre to 'sign on'.
Is there a better way to support sick and disabled people? Prior to the introduction of the points-based predecessor of ESA, Incapacity Benefit, Invalidity Benefit treated each claimant as an individual and asked a simple question - what job is there within a reasonable daily journey, that this person could do? To answer it required a full appraisal of the claimant's capabilities so it was possible to differentiate between people with the same disabilities but different work experience and intellectual ability, and at different points in their working life. A points-based system that doesn't consider these issues effectively discriminates against older, unskilled workers by failing to recognise that even a relatively minor physical disability might make them unemployable. It also underplays the impact of variable conditions on employability.
The failing of the Invalidity Benefit principle was that there had to be a job the claimant could do, but not a vacancy for it. In my former home town, the job often cited as appropriate was 'lift attendant' while the one old-fashioned department store with a staffed lift remained, on the basis that the person so employed could readily move between sitting and standing, so could ease backpain, and needed only minimal upper limb strength to push buttons. The odds of there ever being an actual vacancy for the post were vanishingly small, but so long as the job existed, anyone fit to do it was theoretically fit for work.
So might the answer be a sliding-scale system, involving a Decision Maker with sound knowledge of local employment conditions making an assessment of the proportion of jobs in their area within the capacity of any given claimant, based on a full assessment of the claimant's health, skills, experience, education and re-training potential, and an 'employment disadvantage' percentage payment added to a new earnings-replacement benefit that would replace both ESA and JSA? And with similarly adjustable requirements to seek or prepare for work, based on the claimant's actually ability to cope with them and the probability of there being a job for them?
It would be tricky to assess, certainly, but arguably fairer than the present arrangements, and if you coupled it with access to good training, sound advice and compassionate support from properly skilled Jobcentre staff, it could do what ESA clearly fails to - namely, support people with limited capability for work into appropriate jobs, where those jobs actually exist, and provide an income applicable to the claimant's need where they do not.
I'm not at all sorry to see Atos finally being subjected to both gallows humour and serious journalistic scrutiny, but Atos are merely a symptom and not the disease. It would be extremely easy for this Government - or the next - to gain a quick fix of good press by unceremoniously terminating their contract at the next unsatisfactory audit of their performance. There would be a collective sigh of relief from many quarters were this to happen, but it would be of only limited benefit - no pun intended - to sick and disabled people.
The grim truth is that the problem with Employment and Support Allowance isn't Atos, it's the Work Capability Assessment for which they are employed to provide evidence. Sure, Atos often do a lamentably poor job of assessing the unfortunate claimants sent to them; in my work as a welfare rights adviser I saw some excruciatingly bad decisions often based on such stupidity as, for example, having a Registered Physiotherapist assigned the task of assessing someone with profound mental health problems. On other occasions, what proported to be a clinical judgment was very clearly influenced by negative value judgments about the claimant, especially where addiction played a part in his or her ill health. There were (and still are) errors, contradictions and outright lies in too many Atos-produced reports. And people have paid the price for this with their lives.
But while eliminating incompetence and unfairly subjective assessments would certainly save a great many seriously ill people the distress and anxiety of losing benefit and/or facing an appeal, and the 'taxpayer' the unnecessary costs of those appeals, it wouldn't leave us with a fair or logical system. The real flaws are within the ESA descriptors and, as with DLA, the sharp edges between entitlement and ineligibility, and between the two 'groups' into which ESA recipients are divided.
Admittedly, ESA does allow some room for the exercise of common sense by retaining an exceptional circumstances clause, allowing a claimant to be deemed unfit for work and unfit for work-related activity if necessary to prevent a serious risk to his or her physical or mental health, or to the physical or mental health of another person. Despite this, ESA remains a blunt instrument. Score 15 or more 'points' and you have 'limited capability for work' and entitlement to ESA. Score fewer and you are 'signing on' for Jobseekers Allowance, potentially even if you have completely lost the use of one arm and hand, or have no vision at all (but can get around familiar places with a guide-dog or cane) or even 'cannot learn anything beyond a simple task, such as setting an alarm clock'. While it would be unreasonable to argue that people with these disabilities are automatically unfit for any work, clearly the very term that describes their prospects is 'limited capability for work' - but in ESA law they have no such thing as these limitations each score a meagre 9 points.
A similar sharp edge divides the 'Work-related Activity Group', who receive a lower rate of benefit and are required to carry out 'work-related activity' as a condition of entitlement, from the more severely disabled and higher paid 'Support Group'. In ESA alone, the difference between the two components is up to £20 per week, but there can be other advantages - for example, in Stoke-on-Trent people in the 'Support Group' will potentially eligible for 100% Council Tax Support, while those in the 'Work-related Activity Group' will generally receive no more than 70%. The intention is to protect the most severely disabled, but the consequence is to put a greater financial burden on those with the lower income.
And the difference between the two groups, rather as with the components of DLA, can be miniscule. A claimant unable to lift a 0.5 litre carton of liquid goes into the Support Group. Someone who can, but couldn't manage to lift something fractionally heavier, does not. It's the Support Group if you have, on a daily basis, uncontrollable episodes of aggressive or disinhibited behaviour that would be unreasonable in any workplace, but although 'frequent' episodes of the same will also score 15 points, that puts you into the Work-related Activity Group. 'Occasional' episodes score 9 points and, unless supplemented by other point-scoring issues, will see you off to the Jobcentre to 'sign on'.
Is there a better way to support sick and disabled people? Prior to the introduction of the points-based predecessor of ESA, Incapacity Benefit, Invalidity Benefit treated each claimant as an individual and asked a simple question - what job is there within a reasonable daily journey, that this person could do? To answer it required a full appraisal of the claimant's capabilities so it was possible to differentiate between people with the same disabilities but different work experience and intellectual ability, and at different points in their working life. A points-based system that doesn't consider these issues effectively discriminates against older, unskilled workers by failing to recognise that even a relatively minor physical disability might make them unemployable. It also underplays the impact of variable conditions on employability.
The failing of the Invalidity Benefit principle was that there had to be a job the claimant could do, but not a vacancy for it. In my former home town, the job often cited as appropriate was 'lift attendant' while the one old-fashioned department store with a staffed lift remained, on the basis that the person so employed could readily move between sitting and standing, so could ease backpain, and needed only minimal upper limb strength to push buttons. The odds of there ever being an actual vacancy for the post were vanishingly small, but so long as the job existed, anyone fit to do it was theoretically fit for work.
So might the answer be a sliding-scale system, involving a Decision Maker with sound knowledge of local employment conditions making an assessment of the proportion of jobs in their area within the capacity of any given claimant, based on a full assessment of the claimant's health, skills, experience, education and re-training potential, and an 'employment disadvantage' percentage payment added to a new earnings-replacement benefit that would replace both ESA and JSA? And with similarly adjustable requirements to seek or prepare for work, based on the claimant's actually ability to cope with them and the probability of there being a job for them?
It would be tricky to assess, certainly, but arguably fairer than the present arrangements, and if you coupled it with access to good training, sound advice and compassionate support from properly skilled Jobcentre staff, it could do what ESA clearly fails to - namely, support people with limited capability for work into appropriate jobs, where those jobs actually exist, and provide an income applicable to the claimant's need where they do not.
Friday, 1 February 2013
Fraud and Error
It seems virtually impossible for a politician of any persuasion to mention 'Welfare' these days without, in the same breath, making some reference to 'fraud'. This drip, drip approach has had much the same impact on public attitudes to benefit claimants as the word association game played by the right wing press did with 'asylum-seeker' and 'bogus' - eventually, they could dispense with the 'bogus' because 'asylum-seeker' had become a toxic phrase on its own. We're a long way down that road already with 'Welfare' with a frighteningly high number of people perceiving it as a 'bad thing'.
So, how common is benefit fraud? When politicians throw a figure with lots of zeros on the end at us, it's almost invariably the sum for 'fraud and error'. Note the order they always say those words - 'fraud and error'. You hear 'fraud' first, you're thinking 'fraud' when the big scary number gets quoted. But the truth of the matter is that the bigger proportion - actually two-thirds of the total - is 'error' and that a good proportion of that - approximately a third - is official error, not than claimant error.
For 2011/12 across all benefits, the official Government figure was £3.4 billion overpaid due to 'fraud and error', or 2.1% of total benefit expenditure. Offset against this is £1.3 billion of underpayments, 0.8% of total expenditure. £840m of overpaid benefit was recovered by the DWP or Councils in that year.
So, for each £100 spent on benefits, approximately 70p is therefore overpaid due to fraud. We don't have a detailed breakdown for what that fraud looks like. In the media, it looks like a bloke who said he couldn't walk running a marathon or a woman who said she was a single parent when she had a boyfriend living with her. In reality, I suspect the really big bucks are being lost to landlords putting in fraudulent claims from phatom tenants in areas where rents are expensive, and other organised crime. We certainly know from the official stats that the proportion of fraud in Disability Living Allowance claims is actually lower than the average across benefits as a whole at 0.5%.
I'll come back to this issue in a future post, as there are also matters about the way allegations of benefit fraud are dealt with by the Courts, but I'll leave this one with this thought. The key difference between 'fraud' and 'error' is intent; if the intention is to deceive, then the action is fraud. We have a Government intent on persuading us all that abuse of the Social Security system is a much greater problem than it is in reality, and they are doing so by using figures they know are three times higher than those for dishonest claims alone.
So who exactly is guilty of fraud?
So, how common is benefit fraud? When politicians throw a figure with lots of zeros on the end at us, it's almost invariably the sum for 'fraud and error'. Note the order they always say those words - 'fraud and error'. You hear 'fraud' first, you're thinking 'fraud' when the big scary number gets quoted. But the truth of the matter is that the bigger proportion - actually two-thirds of the total - is 'error' and that a good proportion of that - approximately a third - is official error, not than claimant error.
For 2011/12 across all benefits, the official Government figure was £3.4 billion overpaid due to 'fraud and error', or 2.1% of total benefit expenditure. Offset against this is £1.3 billion of underpayments, 0.8% of total expenditure. £840m of overpaid benefit was recovered by the DWP or Councils in that year.
So, for each £100 spent on benefits, approximately 70p is therefore overpaid due to fraud. We don't have a detailed breakdown for what that fraud looks like. In the media, it looks like a bloke who said he couldn't walk running a marathon or a woman who said she was a single parent when she had a boyfriend living with her. In reality, I suspect the really big bucks are being lost to landlords putting in fraudulent claims from phatom tenants in areas where rents are expensive, and other organised crime. We certainly know from the official stats that the proportion of fraud in Disability Living Allowance claims is actually lower than the average across benefits as a whole at 0.5%.
I'll come back to this issue in a future post, as there are also matters about the way allegations of benefit fraud are dealt with by the Courts, but I'll leave this one with this thought. The key difference between 'fraud' and 'error' is intent; if the intention is to deceive, then the action is fraud. We have a Government intent on persuading us all that abuse of the Social Security system is a much greater problem than it is in reality, and they are doing so by using figures they know are three times higher than those for dishonest claims alone.
So who exactly is guilty of fraud?
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