https://leftfootforward.org/2024/05/benefit-fraud-the-right-wing-lie-that-refuses-to-die/

For many right-wing politicians and their media allies, ‘welfare cheats’ is a line that bears endless repetition.

News broke this week that the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is investigating the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)  over its treatment of disabled people, specifically whether the department failed to make reasonable adjustments for people with learning disabilities or long-term mental health conditions when carrying out benefit health assessments. 

“The DWP has been failing disabled people for decades now” and “full transparency and accountability is imperative,” said David Linden MP, the SNP’s Social Justice Spokesperson, in response to news of the investigation.

For years, successive Tory governments and the media ecosystems that support them, have demonised benefit claimants, presenting them as ‘scroungers,’ ‘frauds’ and ‘cheats.’ Who can forget the Sun’s ‘Beat the Cheat’ campaign in 2012, encouraging readers to be “patriotic” by reporting suspected benefit cheats to a benefit fraud hotline? In 2016, the then chancellor George Osborne refused to apologise for attempting to slice £4.4bn off benefits for people with disabilities, as he defended his controversial budget which led to the resignation of the work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith.

Today, very little has changed, except that the country is mired in a cost-of-living crisis that has fuelled the sharpest increase in absolute poverty in 30 years.

…

Disability benefit fraud a ‘non-issue’

Meanwhile, separate and more recent DWP figures show that there were almost no recorded losses to the taxpayer due to fraud in the disability benefits system in the financial year ending 2024.

Disability Living Allowance fraud was just 0.1 percent, rounded down to £0m. PIP cheating was found to be 0 percent in the same period, the data showed.

PIP overpayments represented 0.4 percent, equating to around £90m lost in a year, marking a significant decrease from the previous year, when such overpayments stood 1.1 percent (£200m). The overpayments were said to be mainly due to errors made by the department when allocating award levels at the assessment stage.

Responding to the figures, Mikey Erhardt, campaigner at Disability Rights UK described PIP fraud as a ‘non-issue.’

“New data shows what we, as disabled people, have known for years – PIP fraud is a non-issue. PIP fraud is now the lowest on record – despite the government placing fraud front and centre of their latest public announcements,” he said.

Erhardt added: “If the government is concerned about fraud, it would be serious about the £15.2bn that multinational companies hide from the UK via tax havens. Money which could fund public services that we all need and use. Instead, disabled people continue to be demonised.”

…

https://leftfootforward.org/2024/05/benefit-fraud-the-right-wing-lie-that-refuses-to-die/