Iain Duncan Smith to Make Benefit Fraudsters Homeless and Penniless.

The Telegraph reports today,

Welfare cheats will be forced to sell their homes and pay higher fines to reimburse taxpayers for the money they have wrongly claimed, under plans to tackle benefit fraud.

The reforms include:

:: A drive to recover debts owed by fraudsters. Ministers will work with private debt collection firms “to make greater use of bailiffs to seize assets” and “force house sales where appropriate”, officials said. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) expects to recover at least £414  million as a result of the initiative.

:: Higher fines for cheats caught committing benefits fraud. Officials can already impose a £50 spot fine on individuals who mistakenly and carelessly provide inaccurate information in their claims, and fraudsters face a minimum fine of £350 as an alternative to prosecution. Plans this week are expected to set out new financial penalties.

:: A publicity campaign, including posters urging claimants to report those whom they suspect to be cheating the system, and letters warning individuals to check they are not receiving too much.

:: Existing claimants will be cross-checked against HMRC records to catch pensioners who are receiving extra income than they have declared from private schemes, while also claiming pension credit, a means-tested benefit.

:: A benefit fraud division will be set up within the DWP. The service will pursue people who make false claims, including housing welfare from councils, tax credits from the HMRC, and other DWP payouts.

 

 

Maria Miller.

The Commissioner, Kathryn Hudson, found that Maria Miller claimed more than £40,000 in mortgage payments to which she was not entitled. This was watered down to just £5,800 by the Commons Standards Committee.

If you want to be even more nauseated the pathetic figure of Iain Duncan Smith says in the Telegraph the following,

 year ago we embarked on some of the biggest reforms to the benefits system since the war. Reforms that will transform lives for the better, strike a fair deal between claimants and the taxpayer, help more people into work and help us build a strong society.

If you’d listened to the scaremongers, you’d be forgiven for thinking we were ripping up the welfare state and telling people to fend for themselves. In fact what we are doing is returning the welfare state to what it was meant to be – a safety net, not a way of life.

Today we can see the real progress we have made: a record number of people in work; the number of people in workless households down more than half a million; and the number of people claiming the main out-of-work benefits down by more than 630,000. What’s more, our changes should save £50 billion by the end of the parliament.

No longer do households receive more in benefits than the average earnings of a family in work. Those who claim that limiting benefits to £26,000 a year is Dickensian should ask hard-working families who put in long hours for that pay what they think. It’s fair – and one of our most popular policies.