Cameron: Credit Firms To Root Out Benefit Cheats

[Injin]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10922261

Credit ratings firms could be used to crack down on the £5.2bn annual cost of benefit cheats and overpayments, David Cameron is to announce.

One firm, Experian, said it was in talks with ministers over a deal which could see it paid according to the number of cheats it uncovers.

Credit rating firms monitor people's spending patterns on household bills and credit card spending.

The PM will also outline plans for tougher penalties and more convictions

Experian said it already had a contract to scrutinise new housing benefit claimants, in a deal agreed by the previous government which had saved £17m.

It added that it could undertake a wider commitment which could see it examining claims for other benefits.

'Payment by results'

Ahead of Mr Cameron's speech, Work and Pensions Minister Chris Grayling said credit agencies held "extensive data" which could be used to cut benefit fraud.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "The whole point is that we are introducing, across a number of government activities, payment by results...

"Government should pay people outside organisations when they get the job done."

Mr Grayling added: "Why should government not use the same tools that are available to independent organisations?"

He rejected fears over the civil liberties of claimants, saying that only credit rating firms which worked "within the rules" would be considered for contracts.

The prime minister said the £1.5bn of money lost every year to benefit fraud had to be tackled.

Writing in the Manchester Evening News, he said: "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 our welfare system.

"Welfare and tax credit fraud and error costs the taxpayer £5.2bn a year. That's the cost of more than 200 secondary schools or over 150,000 nurses.

"It's absolutely outrageous and we can not stand for it."

A simplified benefits system being developed by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith would help reduce the £1.6bn annual bill for administrative errors, he said.

Mr Cameron has previously said that reducing benefit fraud and error would be the "first and deepest" cut in public spending.

Max Wind-Cowie, of the think-tank Demos, said the government should focus more on preventing mistakes in benefit payments than in correcting errors: "It is expensive for individuals and families living in poverty who, through no fault of their own, are asked to pay back large sums of money."

Anyone want to bet that turning your bank credit immediately into cash will be worthy of an investigation?

And for anyone cheering this on, next it'll be low level workers in the public sector, then mid level workers and finally anyone and everyone monitored with the information available to "trusted persons" for a fee. Bought more than the RDA of beer for a few weeks? performance review! (Children of the boys network excepted.)

[PunK BeaR]

It certainly looks like the thin end of the wedge. They start out with benefit cheats as they are villifed by most people so its easy to get the masses to agree with it. Once the scheme has a foothold it will spread like wildfire to other groups.

[Mega]

The wheel has turned, but i suspect its for the ears of the FOREX traders, i see house price news is not good :-

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Business/House-Prices-More-Homes-On-Market-And-Cautious-Buyers-Mean-Supply-Outstrips-Demand-Surveyors-Say/Article/201008215680228?lpos=Business_First_UK_News_Article_Teaser_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15680228_House_Prices%3A_More_Homes_On_Market_And_Cautious_Buyers_Mean_Supply_Outstrips_Demand%2C_Surveyors_Say

What happened to "Pent up demand"?

Its going to be a dark bleak winter.........followed by a LONG HOT SUMMER!

Mike

[council dweller]

Does this mean that if I claim housing benifit in future Experian will check their records, find that I don't exist and then move on?

Or maybe this means that someone who is claiming benefits while still making payments on a couple of villas in Spain will get caught?

[montesquieu]

I have to say this idea has some appeal. Scare stories about mundane social control that bother some uptight civil libertarians are a complete red herring - mashing and mining the datasets involved, which are both very huge and very fast-changing, is a massive, resource-intensive exercise and it would make no sense to go after trivia.

Should play well in middle England with those of us who pay through the nose to fund the lifestyles of benefit cheats, cash-in-hand tax evaders and under-the-radar property speculators. I'd be happy to see them going after bank accounts as well. SOCA do this but its targeting drug dealers and the like, I would have no problems with government access to all family bank transaction details being a pre-requisite of receipt of IDS's unified benefit payment. All tied to an ID card of course.

[Gone baby gone]

The wheel has turned, but i suspect its for the ears of the FOREX traders, i see house price news is not good :-

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Business/House-Prices-More-Homes-On-Market-And-Cautious-Buyers-Mean-Supply-Outstrips-Demand-Surveyors-Say/Article/201008215680228?lpos=Business_First_UK_News_Article_Teaser_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15680228_House_Prices%3A_More_Homes_On_Market_And_Cautious_Buyers_Mean_Supply_Outstrips_Demand%2C_Surveyors_Say

What happened to "Pent up demand"?

Its going to be a dark bleak winter.........followed by a LONG HOT SUMMER!

Mike

Mike, I can only hope you posted this in the wrong thread 'cos it has abso-feckin-lutely nothing to do with the topic being discussed.

[R K]

Are Experian the ones with the black shirts and billy clubs, I can't remember?

In any event it appears Dave's going to be merging govt. departments with US credit agencies. I guess he'll be giving the banksters all your govt. records next.

What could possibly go wrong............

Edit: £5bn lost in the benefits system i.e. paid out to private firms via the recipients; compared to £900billion spunked out to paper over Applegarth, Hornby and Goodwin's f*ckups, compared to how much spunked out rounding up a few thousand peasants in the mountains of Afghanistan?

We've totally lost the plot.

Edited August 10, 2010 by Frank Sidebottom

[Gone baby gone]

Or maybe this means that someone who is claiming benefits while still making payments on a couple of villas in Spain will get caught?

I'm torn by this... on the one hand I hate the big brother aspect, but on the other, it should help catch those who abuse the benefits system and try to make it their 'occupation'.

[yellerkat]

I note Experian is not being asked to data mine for tax-dodgers.

[Gone baby gone]

I note Experian is not being asked to data mine for tax-dodgers.

That would be difficult, because if your affairs are even the tiniest bit complicated, most of the time even the Inland Revenue aren't entirely sure how much tax you should paying!

Edited August 10, 2010 by redalert

[pablopatito]

In any event it appears Dave's going to be merging govt. departments with US credit agencies. I guess he'll be giving the banksters all your govt. records next.

And don't forget the private US healthcare providers that will soon be replacing NHS trusts. Dave's Big Society is basically large US Multinationals running the UK. Cool.

[Sour Mash]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10922261

Anyone want to bet that turning your bank credit immediately into cash will be worthy of an investigation?

And for anyone cheering this on, next it'll be low level workers in the public sector, then mid level workers and finally anyone and everyone monitored with the information available to "trusted persons" for a fee. Bought more than the RDA of beer for a few weeks? performance review! (Children of the boys network excepted.)

Agreed - definitely a 'thin end of the wedge' type move. First get this sort of financial spying accepted by the general public because it's 'to catch the benefits cheats' and then use it to pry into everyone's affairs.

We've already had our freedom to use cash severely curtailed by the so-called anti money laundering laws which allegedly are there to protect us from terrorists and drug dealers (what, no pedos? They missed a trick) and this is yet another step into conditioning people into having their private financial affairs scrutinised by the government and keeping their wealth as bank credit and not cash/liquid assets.

[R K]

And don't forget the private US healthcare providers that will soon be replacing NHS trusts. Dave's Big Society is basically large US Multinationals running the UK. Cool.

We're only a couple of months in, and already one can see where this is headed.

This has all been done before and predictably it never ends well.

What amazes me is how when Dave talks about the money 'lost' he never actually stops to think about where it ends up. i.e. Landlords, supermarkets, Ryanair, Primark, Benson & Hedges etc.

For all our creativity we seem to be very very stupid animals at times.

[Henrik]

We're only a couple of months in, and already one can see where this is headed.

This has all been done before and predictably it never ends well.

What amazes me is how when Dave talks about the money 'lost' he never actually stops to think about where it ends up. i.e. Landlords, supermarkets, Ryanair, Primark, Benson & Hedges etc.

For all our creativity we seem to be very very stupid animals at times.

I'd rather pay less tax and spend it on those things myself, thanks.

Edit: or maybe I've got it wrong... perhaps what we need is *more* benefits cheats, to create jobs in primark and for ryanair... clearly the road to recovery

Edited August 10, 2010 by Henrik

[Gone baby gone]

I'd rather pay less tax and spend it on those things myself, thanks.

Yep, me too.

[fluffy666]

I'd rather pay less tax and spend it on those things myself, thanks.

Edit: or maybe I've got it wrong... perhaps what we need is *more* benefits cheats, to create jobs in primark and for ryanair... clearly the road to recovery

The fun bit is more that we have a massively error-prone system called Tax Credits used by a very large chunk of the population. Since much of the headline figure for benefit fraud is in fact mistakes in administration, what you are going to find is that people in working households who made small mistakes will be hounded for whatever money is owed plus about 10 times that in 'admin costs', whereas the people who are genuinely working/cheating the system will simply ignore the hounding - they will be definition have little non-benefit income, spend all their income and probably have a very bad credit record so there is not point trying to recover anything from them.

[Scott Sando]

This is a joke! The biggest benefit fraud ever just went down in the last three years, and they expect me to turn on the little guy with his 1.5 billion in fraud. I'm not saying its right, it just reeks of, one law for one, one law for another. You can hardly compare Trillions in bailouts with 1.5 billion.

And nomatter what anyone says, its a massive increase in the rights of the state, over the rights of the citizen. Its not what Britains ment to be about, It certainly isn't what my grandfathers put their lives on the line for.

[SarahBell]

We're only a couple of months in, and already one can see where this is headed.

This has all been done before and predictably it never ends well.

What amazes me is how when Dave talks about the money 'lost' he never actually stops to think about where it ends up. i.e. Landlords, supermarkets, Ryanair, Primark, Benson & Hedges etc.

For all our creativity we seem to be very very stupid animals at times.

They need to work out that high rents mean people have less to spend at shops...

[piece of paper]

All good stuff but hardly worthy of a Prime Ministerial announcement. If if were to be 100% effective, that is 9 or 10 days worth of current government borrowing.

Dave, you will become a laughing stock if you are seen to be blowing out a birthday candle as your contribution and big idea for putting out the fire at the oil refinery.

p-o-p

[Gone baby gone]

The fun bit is more that we have a massively error-prone system called Tax Credits used by a very large chunk of the population.

I think the plan will be for tax credits to 'go away' in the next year or two. It's been a colossal feck-up from start to finish. Far better to reduce the income tax rate for those on low incomes, and increase the allowance for those with kids than mess around with some parallel infrastructure that requires you to 'claim' your 'tax credits', the whole thing should be integrated into PAYE.

Edited August 10, 2010 by redalert

[SarahBell]

I think the plan will be for tax credits to 'go away' in the next year or two. It's been a colossal feck-up from start to finish. Far better to reduce the income tax rate for those on low incomes, and increase the allowance for those with kids that mess around with some parallel infrastructure that requires you to 'claim' your 'tax credits', the whole thing should be integrated into PAYE.

Someone on mse with child and working tax credits on maternity leave wants to buy a house for 185k...

[Gone baby gone]

Someone on mse with child and working tax credits on maternity leave wants to buy a house for 185k...

Now that's optimism!

[council dweller]

I think the plan will be for tax credits to 'go away' in the next year or two. It's been a colossal feck-up from start to finish. Far better to reduce the income tax rate for those on low incomes, and increase the allowance for those with kids that mess around with some parallel infrastructure that requires you to 'claim' your 'tax credits', the whole thing should be integrated into PAYE.

Yep, tax credits replaced by a bigger personal allowance and a bit of UC. It's gonna hurt a good many!

[Georgia O'Keeffe]

I think the plan will be for tax credits to 'go away' in the next year or two. It's been a colossal feck-up from start to finish. Far better to reduce the income tax rate for those on low incomes, and increase the allowance for those with kids than mess around with some parallel infrastructure that requires you to 'claim' your 'tax credits', the whole thing should be integrated into PAYE.

they are a pure psychologial play, tax credits are giving you something, income tax reduction is still taking away at the end of the day. They epitomize the UK Labour party and its values which lie completely in the interest of the party rather than country or its inhabitants, they really highlight just how dangerous that party has become over the decades and how it actually works. Attlee would spin in his grave at what Labour have become, they are actually dangerous as well as completely inept, whilst i have a major problem with the tories at least they are only completely inept

Edited August 10, 2010 by Tamara De Lempicka

[scepticus]

they are a pure psychologial play, tax credits are giving you something, income tax reduction is still taking away at the end of the day. They epitomize the UK Labour party and its values which lie completely in the interest of the party rather than country or its inhabitants, they really highlight just how dangerous that party has become over the decades and how it actually works. Attlee would spin in his grave at what Labour have become, they are actually dangerous as well as completely inept, whilst i have a major problem with the tories at least they are only completely inept

Agreed about labour but if you think lord ashcroft is inept you're wrong. D+G may be inept but I suggest those that pull their strings are not, and are in fact very skilled at looking out for their own interests.