£54m benefit fraud!

[Omegstrat6]

Such good points Omeg.

At one point I owned 7 very tidy and modern 2 bed houses that we rented out and we happily took DHSS customers whose housing benefit paid the rent.

Then Labour under Gordon Brown as Chancellor decided it was a good idea to make claimants “more fiscally responsible” by giving them the rent and we then had to get the payment off the tenant!

This was a disaster, so many of these claimants put their own wishes and desires first, many are incapable of budgeting.

We had to stop accepting any DHSS customers, it was a shame because 40% of them were good customers but the other 60% ruined it for them.

Government need to learn that you can’t teach stupid and feckless!

In regards to benefit fraud I think it’s easy to solve.

Every claimant should have a biometric type credit card that reads their iris along with their fingerprints on file, I’d also take their DNA.

Each claim form for a card to access benefits should require all of these things so that the moment a person applies a second time an alert comes up.

If found applying for a second lot of benefits under assumed name the legally allowed first claim should be cancelled so that they get nothing.

Given we’re losing £54b in a year in this fraud it would be worth spending multiple billions setting up a virtually foolproof system.

Totally agree with you that handing responsibility to the feckless to spend their benefit money appropriately is, at best absurdly naive, at worst, grossly incompetent!

I like your idea of using biometrics security processes Mick and am sure that they would help to greatly cut down on such fraud but although their use has increased greatly over recent years (my brother in law has worked in the sector for some time now so I know something of it) I fear that the costs of implementing it on such a scale would still be too great.

Aside from those who would rail against the use of biometrics as an indication of us sliding further into a Big Brother society and an encroachment upon their human rights, I also believe that there will be both the more vulnerable who will not cope with such technology and the more tech. savvy who will find away around it. Advances in AI particularly will ensure that the on going battle for technical supremacy between legitimate services and criminals seeking weaknesses in any security systems will continue.

That all said, the sheer amount of money lost to this one gang alone is staggering and something clearly - and urgently-needs to be done.