SalfordOnline
Your local community website
Articles
 
 Cameron promises 'uncompromising' crackdown on benefit cheats
An "uncompromising" crackdown on benefit cheats will be unveiled in the autumn, David Cameron pledged today. The Prime Minister said reducing the £5.2 billion annual cost of fraud and error would be the "first and deepest" cut in public spending. Writing in the Manchester Evening News ahead of his latest public question and answer session, he said credit rating agencies could be recruited to help identify false claims. Tougher penalties, more prosecutions, measures to encourage others to shop cheats and greater efforts to recover "stolen" payments would also be included, he indicated. Mr Cameron, who is in the north west today to visit a job scheme and talk to voters at the latest PM Direct session, wrote: "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 £5.2 billion 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." He said a simplified benefits system being developed by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith would help reduce the £1.6 billion annual bill for administrative errors. "But we need to do more to stop fraud. £1.5 billion of hard earned taxpayers' money is being stolen from the taxpayer. This is simply not acceptable. "Nor is it right that only £20 million of benefit fraud-related debts are recovered each year or that three in four of those caught don't get prosecuted. "It's quite wrong that there are people in our society who will behave like this. But we will not shrug our shoulders and let them get away with it any longer. We will take the necessary measures to stop fraud happening in the first place, root out and take tough action against those found committing fraud and make sure the stolen money is paid back. "I have asked Iain Duncan Smith to draw up an uncompromising strategy for tackling fraud and error which we will publish in the autumn." Among ideas being examined was using information held by outside bodies such as credit reference agencies to root out benefit cheats, he said. "The first port of call in cutting spending is to stop paying money to people who shouldn't receive it. Cutting fraud and bureaucracy in welfare should be the first and deepest cut that we will make." Employment Minister Chris Grayling told GMTV: "You have actually got to challenge this assumption that anybody can sit at home and do nothing. "What we have got to do is demonstrate to these young people that they can get in to work and do something better. "There are clearly a few people who are abusing the system but the majority have nothing to fear. "What they do have to benefit from is that drive put in place to break people out of that cycle of deprivation that passes from generation to generation." Employment Minister Chris Grayling told GMTV: "You have actually got to challenge this assumption that anybody can sit at home and do nothing. "What we have got to do is demonstrate to these young people that they can get in to work and do something better. "There are clearly a few people who are abusing the system but the majority have nothing to fear. "What they do have to benefit from is that drive put in place to break people out of that cycle of deprivation that passes from generation to generation." Mr Grayling defended the use of credit rating agencies, saying that the Government was simply making use of commercially-available data. "Why should the Government not use the same tools available to independent organisations?" he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. "This is data that is publicly available, that is publicly on sale, that is available to set out spending patterns - what loans you have taken out, what your overall patterns of spending in your life are. "If there is a huge mismatch between the way you are living your life and the amount of money you are supposed to be receiving from the state in benefits, surely it is right and proper that we should be saying 'How is that happening?' "Where it is legitimate and legal to use data, I see no reason why Government shouldn't do so." Source: 24dash.com
Due to problems with spam only SalfordOnline members can now leave comments. Becoming a member of SalfordOnline only takes a minute, just hit the red Join Us button at the top right hand side of the page to create your Personal account. |
