AIBU? Hiding money to obtain benefits.

Georgesgran why was it your business to report this guy's mental health problem, and what exactly was the problem that meant he shouldn't drive? Sounds like you are stigmatizing something you perhaps know nothing about? The main MH issue affecting driving is dementia, which very few ppl report, and which is very dangerous due to its impact on ability to make accurate judgements re speed, distance, etc, slowed reaction time, and general dangerous behaviour! I'm struggling to think of any other MH condition that poses a danger. If he was having seizures that's a different matter, but that is not a MH condition.
And you "expect she has the money in her name"????? You seem to make a lot of suppositions about this family, I'm glad you're not my "friend"!

I'm glad you're not my "friend"!

Me too. There are some very peculiar ideas of friendship on this thread, and I don't know how people reconcile their rage at what they see as the immorality of those who may be cheating the system with their own stance on betraying friendship and confidences. Double standards a go-go!

My Dad always says, all the benefits cheats in home town could not claim enough for one all expenses paid trip for an MP.

Overall I think supporting people on benefits wouldn't get us working folk a starbucks latte a week extra...

So i dont worry about it.

Not worth destroying a relationship..

I know, my mum reported me in a particularly rough time in life where my partner and I split up for a time. Thankfully they were able to see I was already waiting for an appointment to let them know he had moved back in. (back when you couldnt do everything online)

Is it maybe more charitable to urge a friend to realise that they will get caught and will have to repay everything to which they were not entitled, and maybe a fine or imprisonment, so they need to inform DWP or HMRC that their circumstances have changed?

I have just looked it up. Benefit fraud 2020/2021 cost the country £8.4 billion. Some of that is error rather than fraud, but it is a significant amount. You can do an awful lot with £8.4 billion

It would be interesting to find the figures on unclaimed benefits, but by definition I guess that is impossible.

Estimated to stand at about £15 billion www.entitledto.co.uk/blog/2022/february/our-annual-review-suggests-about-15-billion-of-benefits-remain-unclaimed-each-year

Thanks for posting that. I wonder how they arrive at that estimate.

M0nica

I have just looked it up. Benefit fraud 2020/2021 cost the country £8.4 billion. Some of that is error rather than fraud, but it is a significant amount. You can do an awful lot with £8.4 billion

Fraud and Error:

1.2% of benefit expenditure was underpaid in FYE 2021 – the highest underpayment rate to date. This amounted to £2.5bn of underpayments. The underpayment rate has increased from the FYE 2020 rate of 1.1%.

3.9% of benefit expenditure was overpaid in FYE 2021. This amounted to £8.4bn of overpayments. The overpayment rate has increased from the FYE 2020 rate of 2.4%. 3% of the overpayments were deemed to be fraudulant.

It's probably worth remembering that FYE 2021 was the time when many covid benefits were put in place.

Source: Fraud and error in the benefits system for financial year ending 2021.

Just to emphasise, benefit fraud did not cost this country £8.4 billion in FYE 2021. That was the total overpayment of both error and fraud.

At 3% of that I make fraud £250 million. It also makes £8.15 billion or your quoted £8.4 billion error not fraud.

Again, remember these figures relate to the whole of the first year of Covid and neither underpayments or overpayments are usually so high and neither is fraud.

(Happy for someone to check my calculations - it's very late!)

Luckygirl3

It would be interesting to find the figures on unclaimed benefits, but by definition I guess that is impossible.

Apparently 1 in 3 or 800,000 of those eligable to claim Pension Credit do not do so.

You may be able to find some of the other benefits but I suspect it would not be possible to track some, particulary the ones that are not income related. You wouldn't know if someone was ill enough to need the benefit until they claimed it.

I quoted government figures and said they included figures for fraud. It was a neutral statement of the government facts and I made no comment or value judgement on them.

M0nica

I have just looked it up. Benefit fraud 2020/2021 cost the country £8.4 billion. Some of that is error rather than fraud, but it is a significant amount. You can do an awful lot with £8.4 billion

I was not, for one moment, suggesting you were deliberately giving a wrong account. Nevertheless, it was grossly over the actual amount. You offered, as a fact, that "Benefit Fraud" in the last year we have figures for "cost the country £8.4 billion". I simply pointed out that it is only 3% of this amount.

The £8.4 billion is only the "over payment" figure. If we include the "underpayments", fraud will be an even lower fraction of the overall amount.

I am currently trying to be of help to a friend who has a friend who is in tears daily because she can't fill a benefit form out. She will not tell her family she is having problems. The stigma poured on those claiming benefits is part of the problem. Someone who does not understand our everyday technology and cannot (she is part of a large group in this case) understand her finances, as they are so much more complex when the money came in and went out in cash, is in a very frightening world.

Her friend, wisely, will not get involved to the extent this person needs. We all know from threads on here and articles in the more scuralous newspapers, what is said of people who try to help those who become vulnerable. Her friend can only direct her to those offering charitable help with this mire and hope she will sit on the phone waiting to make an appointment and then wait for someone who will come to see her at some future date.

The biggest culprits for errors, deliberate or otherwise in the benefits system, is an overcomplicated system supporting a basic pension on which you cannot live.

In a world where people wonder just how much fraud happens, with people "stealing our taxes", I can tell you that most of the people I have helped get around £5 a week in Pension Credit. The extra help is paid direct and covers such things as housing costs, Council Tax, NHS costs, etc. Yet all we hear about is gossip blaming those having to claim.

I don’t want to get into a slanging match DND but his Mother had lied to the insurance company - the meds he was on precluded him from driving. He is terrified that the ‘drugs barons’ are after him - so he was driving far too fast, going through red lights and ignoring road signs in order to ‘escape them’. With 2 schools and a pedestrian controlled crossing nearby, ‘we’ felt we had to do something when he didn’t stop and almost ran a group over (his mother was in the car and told us about it).

M0nica

I quoted government figures and said they included figures for fraud. It was a neutral statement of the government facts and I made no comment or value judgement on them.

I don’t understand how anyone can quote a figure for benefit fraud.
By definition, only the cases that have been investigated and proved, can be known.
Anything else is surely a ‘guesstimate’, but if anyone knows different, I’d be interested to hear it.

*Witzend. Do not ask me, but I imagine they have the information and estimating techniques to work out roughly what it ought to be.

Have you never thought of something and based on your knowledge made an estimate about its value/distance/ height?

I didn't 'offer as a fact'. I simply posted the government figures.

How long is a piece of string?

.... and I said that it covered errors as well as fraud. I made no attempt to say how that divided, because I do not make estimates where I do not have sufficient information.

If you have an argument, it is with the organ grinder, not the monkey.

The trouble is that these things become accepted wisdom (as with 'one in X pensioners is a millionaire') and when policy is made on that basis people are more likely to accept it and even argue for it.

Witzend

M0nica

I quoted government figures and said they included figures for fraud. It was a neutral statement of the government facts and I made no comment or value judgement on them.

I don’t understand how anyone can quote a figure for benefit fraud.
By definition, only the cases that have been investigated and proved, can be known.
Anything else is surely a ‘guesstimate’, but if anyone knows different, I’d be interested to hear it.

It's done by sampling and then extrapolating the sample Witzend.

Monica, I do understand that you were reporting what you saw in the government document.

What does seem wrong is the amount of noise that comes from elsewhere - often by deliberate selective reporting that infers there is a high level of fraud.

I repeat, but for all, not for you. The level of fraud is very, very low particularly when comparing it with the level of both underpayment and overpayment that occurs, often because of the way the system is designed.

The OP's "Title" is AIBU? Hiding money to obtain benefits. A thread on such a topic can suggest that this is common. My point is that is isn't.

How does that work, then? If (say) they know of definite benefit fraud in X cases in a given area of X households, do they just assume much the same in similar size areas with similar demographics?,

I can see how that would be a reasonable ‘guesstimate’ - but that would assume that they knew of all the cases in area X to start with.

Every so often on MN there’s a poster saying they know for certain that someone’s on the fiddle - even quite open or actually boasting about it. Should they report them?

The vast majority of replies always say that they’d never dream of reporting fraud, however blatant - mind your own business!

Does make you wonder.

No, it doesn't make me wonder Witzend. I trust knowledge more than the guesswork of those who not only do not know but don't bother to find out. I am feeling a little battered by some of the posts on here at the moment. However, I shall try. I just hope you don't attack me for trying to give you some facts.

The sample will be statistically viable. There are norms which have been generally agreed upon by past research. So, you would not take 1 person in 1000, nor would you need 500 in 1000.

Having decided on your sample and the distribution of area they need, the benefits people contact those claimants. The claimant is asked to provide evidence such as identity, bank account details and other information that could affect the benefit claim. The claim is assessed as correct or not. If the claim is not correct, it will be classified as either: Fraud, Claimant Error or Official Error. Every x number of years they do a bigger survey to ensure they have the right size of sample and area going forward to produce correct results.

This is all available on the Government website.

I may think the whole benefits system is cumbersome and created so that some errors are unavoidable and it drives so claiments to the end of their tether, but that doesn't mean the people running it do not do their job as efficiently as possible.

so claiments some claiments