Before appearing on Sky News last night to talk about the government statistics on benefit fraud, I took a look at the full press release from the Commons Public Accounts Committee. It included the astonishing fact that while the government claims - as it would - that it is making great progress in tackling fraud and is going to do even better in future, it is simultaneously reducing the number of staff employed fighting fraud.
Confused? There is no need to be. This sort of government line is routine. It goes, as with this issue, "We acknowledge there is a serious problem, although we should not get it out of proportion. We are not complacent. We are tackling it. We have had successes and we are going to make further substantial improvements." This line is trotted out regardless of the actual facts.
The actual facts in this case is that fraud is far more widespread than the government admits (see the section in The Welfare State We're In for more on this) and the government is now cutting the staff involved in combatting it.
The government claims, of course, that this will have no effect whatever on the fight against fraud because of better methods.
The level of maladministration (or should we just calle it 'shambles') within the department administering benefits was revealed by this detail in the Committee's report:
The Department was unable to find supporting papers in 106 out of 800 Incapacity Benefit cases selected by the National Audit Office for checking. Without these records, including medical reports, the benefit cannot be administered effectively.
Imagine the scandal if a private company had been contracted to look after such records and could not lay its hands on 13 per cent of them. This is an example of the double-standard applied in media judgments about the quality of state-administered services and privately-supplied ones. A failure of private supply is regarded as a major scandal. A failure of state administration does not even get mentioned unless it is spectacular.
One other thing on the unreliability of the much-quoted figure of £3bn lost in fraud and maladministration. The report says,
Because of uncertainties in measuring fraud and error, figures are rounded to the nearest £500 million. The Department is working to improve measurement but some estimates are more than six years old...
And here is the part about reducing staff and how it won't impair performance:
The Department believes that its planned reduction of 30,000 staff by 2008 will not have an impact on the overall effort to reduce fraud and error. Reductions in the number of staff involved in anti-fraud work are expected to be offset by better utilisation of staff and a more targeted approach with better use of intelligence and data matching.
Incidentally, the idea that the department as a whole can lose 30,000 people without the mistakes and maladministration getting even worse is particularly hard to believe.
The full press release of the Committee is here.
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Welfare benefits
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Let's face it, £3 bn is nowhere near the true figure. That's the £3 bn that they know about i.e the fraud and maladministration that's been uncovered. Multiply that by ten and you'd be closer to the true scale of fraud. I know people who have been working the system for years.
Have you noticed how this government is always making wonderful progress - in the future? All they seem to be able to do is identify where 'improvements need to be made', without ever actually improving anything. We already know where improvements need to be made: we were kinda hoping you'd make them. All this after eight years of 'thinking the unthinkable'. Or is that what you meant - just thinking about it? How do they get away with it!
Posted by: Brad at October 12, 2005 11:34 AM