I SUSPECT THAT WE ALL HAVE A LITTLE LIST

We've heard a lot recently about how much fiddling goes on in the benefits system. 


Since the days of Peter Lilley and his song and dance routine about having a little list, like Gilbert and Sullivan's KoKo, and how he was going to get all these people off said list, we have been demonizing people who claim benefits, without stopping to think about why some of them are claiming.


Politicians from the Tory camp to the Labour camp and now the Liberals have taken pleasure in carping about scroungers. And that's fair enough, because there are scroungers out there. Some of us will know someone who should be working but isn't trying, but that doesn't mean that all or even most of the people who are claiming unemployment benefits of some sort are scrounging.


And it's surprising how many people immediately assume that if you're on the dole you must be swinging the lead, until they, or their son, or niece or grandson is thrown out of work. Then of course, it's a different story and there are, suddenly and mysteriously, no jobs.

Horribly now there is evidence that disabled people, some even in wheelchairs and on sticks are being taunted with the "scrounger" label as they struggle to get on buses or do their shopping. And yes, once again there are people who are fiddling the country, but they are damned few.


A report by the Department of Work and Pensions which looks at overpayments and fraud in the benefits system shows that a very small amount of the benefit that is claimed is actually fraudulent.


The report is for 2010-11 and shows the following:

• 0.8% of benefit spending is overpaid due to fraud, amounting to £1.2 billion;
• This proportion is the same as in 2009/10.

Estimates for different benefits are:

• Retirement Pension 0.0%;
• Incapacity Benefit 0.3%;
• Disability Living Allowance 0.5%;
• Council Tax Benefit 1.3%;
• Housing Benefit 1.4%;
• Pension Credit 1.6%;
• Income Support 2.8%;
• Jobseeker’s Allowance 3.4%;
• Carer’s Allowance 3.9%.

Of all the benefits, retirement pension has virtually no fraud, simply because you have to be over 65 to get it if you are a man, and over 61 if you are a woman. (Incidentally, so much for equality. Can you just imagine the hoo haa if it were the other way round?)

After that you have tiny amounts of Incapacity and DLA which are misclaimed. I'll lay money that the Incapacity Benefit fraud is almost always someone who HAS been ill but is now better, not volunteering that information immediately to DWP, and that the DLA fraud is almost all in the free cars given to the most disabled people on the highest level of help, and which are frequently used by other members of the family for their own use.

I'm happy that the government is looking into that fraud, but these figures (remember they are DWP, or government figures) show that 99.7% of Incapacity Benefit claims are genuine, and 99.5% of DLA are genuine. It seems a pity to be encouraging the nurses at ATOS to take genuinely ill people off these benefits, does it not, and it also seems rather unreasonable to tar everyone with a disability as a scrounger when such a great proportion of them are clearly not...(and all to save money because the bankers and the politicians made, and continue to make, a cock up of running the country).

Would that the same proportion of MPs and Lords could be said to be straight down the middle with their claims. As far as I could make out from the Telegraph's investigation over 50% of their claims were dodgy...

It might be worth remembering too that most of the people in receipt of benefits have paid into National Insurance all their working lives in order to get benefits when something goes wrong in their lives...unlike MPs and Lords who simply fiddled their expenses because they thought they were worth more, and they were sure they would never be found out.

SOUP KITCHENS AND FOOD PARCELS FOR EX-BENEFIT CLAIMANTS

Across the country tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of people could be forced to rely on food parcels because of benefit problems, as Davnik Cleggeron’s government presses ahead with its plan to slash the country's welfare bill.

Of course cutting welfare is always a good idea, and helping people back to work is something that every government should do, and to be fair, has been doing, but the best time to help people back to work is when there is some work to help them back into.

Charities that run food banks have warned this weekend of the prospect of people having to rely on third world-style food aid, and, as a person peripherally involved with such a charity, and the amazing people who actually work there, I know that this is the case. The needs have nearly doubled over the last year. The charities think that food parcels and soup kitchens will have to be arranged for maybe up to 1.5 million people who will be moved off incapacity benefit.

Around 37% of people who have been referred to this degrading “poor house style” charity have been in need because of delays and inaccuracies caused by the DWP, whose agencies are understaffed to deal with influx of people they are having to deal with and staff are untrained and disincentivized.

I have certain knowledge of people’s benefits being stopped effectively retrospectively because of delays in sending out letters. And as you can’t just walk into a job centre for help, you have to make an appointment first, sometimes weeks in advance, this may well cause problems.

Neil Coyle, director of policy for the charity Disability Alliance said: "For people to be pushed into poverty and forced to rely on food parcels to eat, something we all think of as a basic human right, is disgusting,"

Foodbanks are something that perhaps most people find an alien concept in a supposedly first world country which conducts wars all over the world and has regattas at Henley, strawberry teas at Wimbledon, and garden parties at the Palace, but there are three times as many of these organizations as there were only 2 years ago.

Another of the problems is that people with chronic illnesses such as multiple sclerosis and ME will probably be told to go get work, move to another town, whatever, but perhaps very few employers will want to employ them, especially when there is a HUGE pool of labour freshly redundant from big business closures and civil service payoffs. They will be left with insufficient money to pay for medication out of their Job Seekers Allowance and may have to turn to crime, such as shoplifting, to make ends meet. This is what happens in third world countries where there is no or little welfare provision.

In other cases people will have to be hospitalized in an NHS already facing massive reductions in funding.

People visiting food banks are usually given supply of cheap food, which includes tinned, fruit, meat and fish, and pasta, tea bags and UHT milk. A parcel for a family of four weighs roughly 20kg, and is worth around £19. Food banks, which are staffed by volunteers, rely entirely on donations from local schools, businesses and individuals. They are community-run, in conjunction with local churches, and of course in many parts of the country there is no food bank provision at all.

How much will the new nuclear deterrent cost? Oh dear. It makes you proud to be British doesn’t it.

Pics: Poverty and people raising money for Food banks: Wealth and Fancy dress parties for the super rich at Royal Ascot and Henley Regatta.