Benefit Cheats?

debncreme you are taking the comments re benefit cheats far too personally. there are cheats and those playing the system - other posters have agreed with me and we all know cases ( a small minority of claimants of course.)
I feel benefits should be there to help those who truly need them but to be certain they really NEED them there has to be scrutiny.
re the program on last night and the night before on those who cannot afford food I do wish they had thrown in a few figures to see where the benefit money goes.
income say £225 per week in one case but the rent and council tax would be paid as well as help towards utilities.
so where does the money go - is it the debt interest on payday loans
is it other things that could be cut back so that more is available to feed the children (who would probably get free school meals) ?
not enough real facts.

strange this little thread came up just as I had looked at "tax fraud" maybe one or two will remember my thread about our fence and the cowboy builder that had only put our fence post in the ground less than 3 inch last year and has now blown down with the winds etc..I went to his house twice, wrote him a nice but firm letter and nothing! we have now had the fence repaired by a lovely lad at a cost lot less than the original (and with a receipt)! I feel frustrated and the first builder did our roof for us (new plastic things on the end)at a cost of around £450 and yes we paid him cash (not that it was any cheaper) and I never asked for receipt as he never offered and of course you trust people (well I used to)!! I know this builder has done several roof jobs around here and I am sorely tempted!!! to get my own back, although the I.R may not want to bother with such small fry, but then the tiddlers!! can be mush easier to catch than the sharks!

There have always been poor people and there probably always will be. Those who have kept their family to a reasonable size and done their best to manage without smoking, drinking, or as I saw when I watched a bit of that programme last night, eating fish and chips from a shop etc. should get the help they need. If, however, people think that it is OK to have large families, and anything else they want at the expense of the rest of us, they should not get help. We all have responsibilities to our families and other taxpayers and it seems to me that sometimes there is a call for the government to spend more and more without any recognition that such spending comes from all of us. I am happy to spend on those who need it but not on those who are just manipulating the system. Perhaps if all the people who are doing so were stopped there would be more money for the ones who really need it. Now I shall duck.

I don't care how many or how few benefit cheats there are, they should not be allowed to get away with it any more than any other criminal. It seems pointless to me to compare one crime with another when all crime should be stopped. I also have no idea how any of us can guess at the number of cheats because we don't know how many are getting away with it!

There's no wriggle room now for people who are living on a financial edge. Most of everyone's income now is already committed in terms of standing orders or direct debits for utilities, mortgages or rent, buying large items on hire purchase or paying off credit or store cards. In the case of utilities, the monthly payments often seem to be set at an unrealistic level. So the utility company keeps and banks our money, instead of us. In the days when mothers put the cash wages in different pots, if a crisis occurred they could decide how to juggle the expenses. People on low, or even moderate, wages now probably have very little real disposable income. When I was a child in the 1940s and 1950s the house was always cold except for the room with the fire. The fire heated the water and the oven. During the really bad winters of 1947 and 1949 people burned their furniture when they couldn't find any more wood. Electricity (no gas) was paid for by a slot machine and we could choose to do without it. Not the case now.

I agree with what you say glamma. I have only watched the first episode of the programme, I have the other one taped. I also felt sorry for the man on his own, who didn't want to tell his children he was struggling. The thing was when we were kids, there was no help so people had to cope as best they could. I suppose you can't blame people today for turning to the state for help, as it is there for them to use, they don't know any different.

Katy I watched it too and also noticed the smoking by the mothers and one was in the lounge with the children when they had just woken up,I'm affraid there must be some sort of problem with these mums not being able to cope with cooking from scratch as my Dd does even though she is on a tough budget she makes all her own meals and has never had to reply on food banks,I did feel very sorry for the family with two little boys whose mother had walked out on them as the father was stated to be contributing to another 4 children he had with another previous partner at least he made an effort and ended up volunteering as a part time chef,which gave him a bit of his self respect back.My mum was lucky as dad always worked and had a good job but she still had no spare cash at the end of the week,she put everything into "jars" for differant bills every Friday when dad got paid,made all our dresses and went to Paddy's Market in Liverpool for our shoes and during the summer we spent everyday on the beach making sandcastles as no holidays could be afforded,but mum & dad owed no one a penny and we where all well feed.sorry to go off topic a bit.

Yes I watched that jen. To be honest I don't know what to make of it. The two mums both had obviously had their nails done and one was smoking but they said they couldn't feed their children. They had the wide screen TVs etc but then these were probably paid for before their circumstances changed, as glamma says. Maybe the smoking helps them cope - I don't know really. My mother had 7 children and a drunken violent husband who only occasionally gave her money. All she had at times was a small amount of family allowance. Although our home life was tough, we didn't starve or get hand outs of any kind because they just weren't available then.

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2014/03/12/corruption-graces-story/

More important than the tiny amount of benefits stolen by benefit cheats.

Did anyone watch the programme about the rich and famous going to foodbanks.
What annoyed me was that at the end they were asking for the viewer to give £5 towards food banks. No! They should have been asking us to sign petitions to get the government to pay enough benefits and wages so that people did not have to go to food banks.

Surely it could only apply to people who have been found guilty of fraud if it came into effect at any time in the future,the same or similar is used I think for the proceeds of crime ?
Most people on ESA have to have the use of computers for the searching of jobs don't they and most jobs are requesting your application via e-mail so I don't for one minute think owning a computer is now classed as a luxury item at all,my DD has 2 computers and the x box thingy for the children and the wide screen TV and the other items what we would have years ago called luxuries but she bought all these before her circumstances changed and they where all paid for before she was left with 4 children when her husband decided he needed a younger model she is now hounded by the powers that be to secure work which would have her worse off financially but thats another story.

You must see the other side of the coin Galen and obviously they should be taken to task and made to pay for their fraud. I though can only go by my experience. At the moment I know of one family which seems to have had a lot of help over the years and about five families who have come to need help more recently and they are definitly being targetted by the local council.

I do not understand how people can cheat the system as it stands and fall through the net if they are being dealt with the same way as my daughter.

Galen my ex husband was one of those, bad back, couldn't work but could go clay pigeon shooting, sea fishing AND work for cash driving a cattle lorry from the UK to farms in France!

The only difference is he never got caught.

Thank you Deb - so do you. It was just my little joke. Some of the people working there were lovely - some not so - as in all walks of life. Back to the subject in hand. There is a lady in the Daily Mail online today, from Uganda I think, who was part of a gang which defrauded the British taxpayer out of £4m, claiming for up to 100 children who didn't exist. How does that work then? She has been jailed and told she will be deported afterwards. She is now claiming asylum as she says the shame of going home when she has been in prison would be too much for her !!!!!!

Apart from ESA , they're probably claiming both the mobility and care components of DLA.

That's the sort of person I mean. Also the ones who claim to be disabled with eg a bad back and then are caught on camera running for a bus and digging their garden.

We received an income based JSA payment of just over £120 on Wednesday. This was all we were entitled to at the time as it wasn't a full weeks claim.
£40 disappeared straight away (car insurance payment taken, and phone/broadband). We have to have a car as there is no public transport, so we did some limited food shopping and got some petrol. We will not receive any other payments until March 26th. I somehow doubt that the money will last that long! I did ask if there was anything else that we might be able to get, and was told to contact the council to get details of the nearest food bank.

I knew someone living here, just outside Durban, in a very smart house who had lied to social welfare on application forms while living in England, for a short time, and was enjoying the rent from one or two council flats paid for by social security. He was a liar and cheat. I wish he could have been caught before he died. Ghastly man.

I don't know, but would imagine that this would only be for those that have been proved to be cheating.
Sorry to disagree with you, but I have seen many cases of blatant fraud where the overpayment has run into several hundred thousand pounds.

KatyK you certainly sound very nice . apologies for 'families heads', I am too to bother about my grammar - 'family's heads'?

I am sorry mollie but I think there are fewer benefit cheats than we realise. It makes the government look good to say we are cracking down on such cheats but they are an easy option.

The suggestion is that cars and computers will be taken away. These are vital tools required in the job seeking world for those who are not employed. However many are employed and it is this which sets the benefit bells ringing, even though 16 hours is all the work allowed in order to ensure a roof over a families heads, the assumption is made that all benefit recipients are cheating the system.

I apologise for keeping on about this but it is only when the situation hits a member of your family that you realise just how truly devastating it is.

I worked for the Inland Revenue and I think I'm rather nice

whenim64 - The Inland Revenue are voracious, and can be positively thuggish (he said, with feeling) so you can rest easy...

it is because there are benefit cheats and those who play the system that the innocent have to be scrutinised and the 'pen pushers' are only doing their job because there are those who do cheat and lie. If everyone was honest about their circumstances such scrutiny would not be necessary.

I hope the same, or more, rigour is being applied to tax evaders! Tens of billions could be recouped from that source!

I assume this will only be applied to people who have proved to be benefit cheats and used as a way of recouping some of the money.

I do agree however that it is hard to understand how people get away with claiming as much as they do when I think about the hoops we had to jump through when my DH was diagnosed with terminal cancer. It does seem to be the innocent people who just need a helping hand who are targeted by the pen pushers, I suppose because being open and honest they are easy targets.