Peter Hain is squandering £millions, starving involuntarily poor!
Evidencer | 27.10.2007 10:59 | Analysis | Social Struggles
.Yesterday's news in Britain included a half-heartedly admitted fact - that Peter Hain's Department for Work and Pensions is squandering £millions of public money. This is happening when the same Peter Hain Department is also starving uncounted numbers of involuntary poor in the country
How the ‘welfare benefits’ minister Peter Hain is squandering £millions while starving the involuntarily poor!
The item that caught my eye on Friday was by no means the only one that could be in the news about misuse of public funds by Peter Hain and his Department. It was the one that the Daily Mail hid in one of their deeper inside pages. Not the front page. Not the second or third page. Not a feature page 'shock-horror' either. But a piece that was presented without much evidence of the Daily Mail’s trade mark selling, marketing stance, the posture of outrage.
Yet the item warrants more than it has been given by the 'authoritative' media.
It concerns the 'discovery' that “Benefits worth £500 million were paid out in error last year, according to official figures. ”
What the Daily Mail and others whop think like the ‘contributors’ of what constitutes the Daily Mail school of ‘thought’ in Britain, will make of the ‘discovery’ is easy to predict.
They will cite it as another proof that ‘welfare’ is being abused mainly by the benefit claimants.
This will be true only in a very small fraction of cases.
The main bulk of the ‘popularly perceived’ budget of the DWP is not addressed in paying to genuine claimants. But in making huge sums available to the huge conglomerates and the large bureaucracy.
The benefit fraud inspectorate that has been referred to in the piece as carried by the Daily mail is a big fraud in itself.
It is a proganqada outfit that is part of the institutional and deliberate fraud inside the DWP and Jobcentre plus.
The plan behind the DWP's over-publicized Benefit Fraud Inspectorate is to intimidate genuine claimants into giving up their rights.
The incidence and the frequency of state-created or rather DWP and JCP-created poverty and hardship in Britain is not something that has been given any recognition by the media. It is time that the scandal was recognized
I am initiating an information programme to help highlight the multibillion£ scandal that is in fact a system that is robbing the involuntarily poor and making the fraudsters richer. The stigma that the benefit claimants are treated with is a violation of all that is supposed to be the human right of every member of society.
Below is the Daily Mail [26.10.2007] piece from their web site as well as the web page address for anyone interested to look in detail at the item I have now talked about.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=489769&in_page_id=1770
How prison inmates were paid £17m in benefits by mistake
By JAMES CHAPMAN –
Last updated at 21:18pm on 25th October 2007
Benefits worth £500 million were paid out in error last year, according to official figures.
In a decade, £5 billion has been lost through fraud and error. Prisoners, students and those with jobs and money in the bank have all enjoyed payouts to which they were not entitled.
Since 1997, more than £17 million has been wrongly paid to prisoners, who are not eligible for many benefits during their incarceration.
Students have received £33 million while those who are in hospital for the long term - and are not entitled to Jobseeker's Allowance or Income Support - were handed £10 million.
More than £1 billion has gone in benefits to those who have jobs and are not entitled.
Prisoners are not entitled to Jobseeker's Allowance - worth up to £57.45 a week - as they are not available for work.
Nor are they eligible for income support, worth the same amount, or pension credit.
Help with housing costs is payable only to those on remand, awaiting trial or sentencing.
Inmates are not usually eligible for incapacity and disability benefits, the state pension, carer's allowance, industrial injuries benefit or maternity allowance.
The sums involved suggest that thousands of prisoners continue to receive handouts through fraud or error after they have been jailed.
Most full-time students are not entitled to claim social security benefits.
Tory work and pensions spokesman Chris Grayling said: 'I never cease to be amazed by how incompetent this Government can be.
'They are paying out vast amounts of taxpayers' money to the wrong people. It beggars belief that they would actually be paying out benefits wrongly to people in prison.'
The number of prosecutions and convictions have fallen every year for five years.
Prosecutions dropped from 11,584 in 2000-2001 to just 8,670 in 2004-2005. There were 11,403 convictions in 2000-2001, but only 8,573 in 2004-2005, a fall of about 25 per cent in each case.
Fraud and error in the benefits system costs each taxpayer about £100 a year, senior MPs say.
In a recent report, the Commons Public Accounts Committee said the total bill for 2004 was £3 billion. Half the money was lost because of mistakes by officials.
MPs concluded that the Government had little idea of how much was owed by claimants who had been overpaid.
Benefits Minister James Plaskitt said yesterday: 'Fraud and error was left untackled before 1997 because it wasn't even regularly measured.
Since then we have slashed in half losses to fraud and error in Income Support and Jobseeker's Allowance, saving taxpayers around £3 billion.
'A continuing, hard-hitting benefit fraud campaign is running alongside a new strategy aimed at taking out a further £1 billion of error.'
The item that caught my eye on Friday was by no means the only one that could be in the news about misuse of public funds by Peter Hain and his Department. It was the one that the Daily Mail hid in one of their deeper inside pages. Not the front page. Not the second or third page. Not a feature page 'shock-horror' either. But a piece that was presented without much evidence of the Daily Mail’s trade mark selling, marketing stance, the posture of outrage.
Yet the item warrants more than it has been given by the 'authoritative' media.
It concerns the 'discovery' that “Benefits worth £500 million were paid out in error last year, according to official figures. ”
What the Daily Mail and others whop think like the ‘contributors’ of what constitutes the Daily Mail school of ‘thought’ in Britain, will make of the ‘discovery’ is easy to predict.
They will cite it as another proof that ‘welfare’ is being abused mainly by the benefit claimants.
This will be true only in a very small fraction of cases.
The main bulk of the ‘popularly perceived’ budget of the DWP is not addressed in paying to genuine claimants. But in making huge sums available to the huge conglomerates and the large bureaucracy.
The benefit fraud inspectorate that has been referred to in the piece as carried by the Daily mail is a big fraud in itself.
It is a proganqada outfit that is part of the institutional and deliberate fraud inside the DWP and Jobcentre plus.
The plan behind the DWP's over-publicized Benefit Fraud Inspectorate is to intimidate genuine claimants into giving up their rights.
The incidence and the frequency of state-created or rather DWP and JCP-created poverty and hardship in Britain is not something that has been given any recognition by the media. It is time that the scandal was recognized
I am initiating an information programme to help highlight the multibillion£ scandal that is in fact a system that is robbing the involuntarily poor and making the fraudsters richer. The stigma that the benefit claimants are treated with is a violation of all that is supposed to be the human right of every member of society.
Below is the Daily Mail [26.10.2007] piece from their web site as well as the web page address for anyone interested to look in detail at the item I have now talked about.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=489769&in_page_id=1770 How prison inmates were paid £17m in benefits by mistake
By JAMES CHAPMAN –
Last updated at 21:18pm on 25th October 2007
Benefits worth £500 million were paid out in error last year, according to official figures.
In a decade, £5 billion has been lost through fraud and error. Prisoners, students and those with jobs and money in the bank have all enjoyed payouts to which they were not entitled.
Since 1997, more than £17 million has been wrongly paid to prisoners, who are not eligible for many benefits during their incarceration.
Students have received £33 million while those who are in hospital for the long term - and are not entitled to Jobseeker's Allowance or Income Support - were handed £10 million.
More than £1 billion has gone in benefits to those who have jobs and are not entitled.
Prisoners are not entitled to Jobseeker's Allowance - worth up to £57.45 a week - as they are not available for work.
Nor are they eligible for income support, worth the same amount, or pension credit.
Help with housing costs is payable only to those on remand, awaiting trial or sentencing.
Inmates are not usually eligible for incapacity and disability benefits, the state pension, carer's allowance, industrial injuries benefit or maternity allowance.
The sums involved suggest that thousands of prisoners continue to receive handouts through fraud or error after they have been jailed.
Most full-time students are not entitled to claim social security benefits.
Tory work and pensions spokesman Chris Grayling said: 'I never cease to be amazed by how incompetent this Government can be.
'They are paying out vast amounts of taxpayers' money to the wrong people. It beggars belief that they would actually be paying out benefits wrongly to people in prison.'
The number of prosecutions and convictions have fallen every year for five years.
Prosecutions dropped from 11,584 in 2000-2001 to just 8,670 in 2004-2005. There were 11,403 convictions in 2000-2001, but only 8,573 in 2004-2005, a fall of about 25 per cent in each case.
Fraud and error in the benefits system costs each taxpayer about £100 a year, senior MPs say.
In a recent report, the Commons Public Accounts Committee said the total bill for 2004 was £3 billion. Half the money was lost because of mistakes by officials.
MPs concluded that the Government had little idea of how much was owed by claimants who had been overpaid.
Benefits Minister James Plaskitt said yesterday: 'Fraud and error was left untackled before 1997 because it wasn't even regularly measured.
Since then we have slashed in half losses to fraud and error in Income Support and Jobseeker's Allowance, saving taxpayers around £3 billion.
'A continuing, hard-hitting benefit fraud campaign is running alongside a new strategy aimed at taking out a further £1 billion of error.'
Evidencer
