Benefit fraud is a rather complex issue - which is likely to have had some
sort of impact on the census results as indicated to some extent in my
comments quoted in the article.

Legally speaking, people can be employed in ILO definitions and claim JSA - if
they work less than 16 hours. Of course, if you declare such earnings then
your benefit gets cut apart from a small disregard which has not been
increased with inflation for years, despite all the advocacy groups calling
for this. Up until this year you could get some of the withheld benefits back
on starting work of more than 16 hours - back to work bonus. The size of the
group legally working while on JSA is not regularly published, though the
administrative sources clearly have this data.

The issue of potential people claiming benefits but not existing - a sort of
personation - is a result of long-standing failures in the National Insurance
numbering system - and is an indication of the sort of difficulties that a
new ID system will face.

Those involved in surveys of benefit claimants are well aware of 'giro drop'
addresses.

However, I tend to take a rather more positive view - the existence of benefit
fraud is not only about people getting more money, but about getting a stable
income when the bottom end of the labour market is chronically 'flexible' and
that in some areas the labour market is so weak (and working for small cash
amounts so longstanding) that what is needed is more a regularisation
approach supported by minimum wages and tax credits, as a package, rather
than simply anti-fraud activity.

Local authorities are keen to use their GIS systems in anti-fraud work with
general DWP benefits. This does have potential data protection and civil
liberties implications.

Paul Bivand (Personal capacity)

On Friday 09 Jul 2004 13:36, Allan Reese FM CEFAS wrote:
> Did a superfluous NOT intrude in the second sentence below or was it in the
> FT article?  How about the equally plausible interpretation that benefit
> fraud is rife? Allan Reese ... who left Hull to find work
>
> "The failure was highlighted in a study of the unemployed in
> Hull, where three inner city wards had nearly 400 more unemployed benefit
> claimants than jobless working age men recorded in the census. The number
> of claimants would *not* [my emphasis] normally be lower as not all
> unemployed people can claim benefit."
>
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