Archive for the ‘Fraud’ Category
Benefits Crackdown.
You’ll be contacted via your online journal or a call from your Jobcentre.
This appeared a couple of days ago in the Mirror,
One million Universal Credit claimants told to act now as DWP starts benefit crackdown
Citizens Advice is warning claimants to check their online journals weekly and answer Jobcentre calls to ensure their payments are not terminated.
The Department for Work and Pensions is cracking down on benefit fraud in a move that will see over a million new claims over the past year investigated.
The government body said it has lost £8.4billion in the past 12 months – a figure it estimates is largely down to fraudulent claims and errors in a year when more than six million people joined Universal Credit.
Over that period, identity checks were processed online, for instance, rather than face-to-face and some information was taken on trust, such as the cost of rent.
The overall level of fraud and error across the benefits system increased by almost two-thirds, from 2.4% last year to 3.9%, the highest ever reported rate.
The fraud rate on the main benefit, Universal Credit, was up by more than 50%, it said.
We’ve teamed up with charity Citizens Advice to explain everything you need to know on the DWP’s Trust and Protect scheme, and the steps you should take to ensure you don’t lose out on benefits you’re entitled to.
What is the Trust and Protect scheme?
In the early stages of the pandemic last year, the DWP introduced new measures to make sure people could apply for benefits quickly, without the need to visit a Jobcentre.
This meant that some of the requirements relating to proof of identity, housing costs and household circumstances were eased.
Citizens Advice – DWP’s ‘Trust and Protect’ scheme: Your need-to-knows
People who applied for Universal Credit as Covid hit could be subject to a benefits check by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
The DWP is now looking at all claims made in the early stages of the pandemic and asking people for this evidence to support their application. People who claimed New Style JSA and New Style ESA last spring may also be contacted.
How will the DWP contact me?
You’ll be contacted via your online journal or a call from your Jobcentre. This may show up as a withheld number. Make sure your contact details are up to date and try to check your online journal at least once a week for new notifications.
If you’re struggling to manage your online claim for any reason – including lack of access to a computer – you should be able to change to a non-digital claim. Citizens Advice can support you with this.
What happens if I can’t provide the right evidence?
If you can’t provide the right evidence, or you cannot be contacted by officials seeking to verify your claim, your payments could be stopped or changed.
Universal Credit
This campaign relates to policy or practice in England and Wales.
We’ve helped over 300,000 people with Universal Credit issues since the beginning of the pandemic. Our clients’ evidence helps us play a key role in influencing the Government to ensure the welfare system works for all those needing support.
#KeepTheLifeline Campaign
We welcomed the Government’s decision at the start of pandemic to increase Universal Credit and Working Tax Credits by £20 a week. This uplift has provided a lifeline for millions of families across the UK, during extraordinarily tough times.
The uplift is in place until September 2021. We’re calling for it to be made permanent to provide financial security for millions of people and help support the country’s longer term economic recovery.
£20 Universal Credit uplift set to end before the winter.
Its a Big Thumbs Up for a cut the Dole.
£20 Universal Credit uplift set to end before the winter, Cabinet minister signals
Evening Standard.
Exclusive: Pensions Secretary tells the Standard: ‘We need to try to get people into work.’
The £20 uplift to Universal Credit is set to end before the winter, a Cabinet minister signalled today.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak has already extended the £20-per-week benefit boost to the end of September.
But asked if the government would consider doing it again during a winter surge, Work and Pension Secretary Therese Coffey told the Standard: “We need to try to get people into work.”
Ms Coffey said she was not anticipating the Government would have to take measures “out of the ordinary” this winter.
It comes after Boris Johnson warned there could still be another surge of Covid-19 during the winter period.
Here’s Coffey at ‘work’.
Update: more on this story:
Monitoring of Claimants “suspected of Fraud” Extended to Social Media.
This story has appeared. Some suggest it is scare tactics, even scare-mongering, but it is still threatening. What has social media got to do with making a benefit claim?
20 million benefits or Universal Credit claimants hit by warning over their social media accounts Birmingham Live.
Welfare claims including Universal Credit are managed by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP)
The DWP can look at your bank account and social media if it suspects benefit fraud, claimants have been warned.
Welfare claims including Universal Credit are managed by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP).
And it has emerged the body has the power to investigate potential crimes in several different ways.
More than 20million people are using welfare support in Britain – a figure that is expected to rise.
In case you had not got the messages Cambridgeshire Live headlines.
Manchester Evening News
And so it goes:
Meanwhile by coincidence….
DWP confirms when Universal Credit and PIP claimants will see face-to-face assessments restart
North Wales Live:
Face-to-face assessments of certain benefits are set to resume next month, it’s been revealed.
It comes after they were suspended last year by officials at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Universal Credit Fraud, DWP Hounds People for Debts they do not owe.
This story appeared a couple of days ago and has raised a whole series of questions.
People whose identities have been stolen hit by demands for repayment for debt they do not owe.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is coming under pressure to stop hounding unwitting victims of a multimillion-pound universal credit fraud.
In November, the Guardian revealed how benefits staff were struggling to deal with calls from people whose stolen identities had been used to make fraudulent universal credit claims in their name.
We featured the case of a Hampshire woman who had known nothing of the claim she had supposedly made until the DWP’s debt collectors demanded she repay a £1,300 advance payment.
Further victims have come forward to say they, too, are facing demands for £1,400-plus and are being told that 20% of their December pay packet will be seized by the DWP, unless they agree to set up a repayment plan – all for a debt they do not owe.
Today, the Scotsman,
Pilot pursued by UK Government over ‘fraudulent’ benefits claim
A Scots pilot has told how he is being pursued by the UK Government for benefit fraud after having his identity stolen.
Andrew Simpson* was contacted in September by a debt management company run by the Department of Work and Pensions claiming he owed £821 due to fraudulently claiming Universal Credit while being employed. The debt collectors wrote to his employer, demanding that the money was deducted from his next pay cheque.
However, Mr Simpson, from Edinburgh, who has been in full-time work with his current employer for the past eight years, has never claimed Universal Credit or any other kind of benefit
DWP Sending Universal Credit into Meltdown.
DWP has Money for this….
Didn’t she do well?
Anybody with a sighting of any surviving Tory leadership figure talking about Universal Credit, from Johnson to Hunt, or one of their minions, please write in comments.
So far not a dicky bird….
Yet it continues to make it into the media.
This is a good article.
The DWP’s muddled maths is sending universal credit deeper into meltdown
The Independent.
By the estimable May Bulman Social Affairs Correspondent
It may come as a surprise, then, that nine years on, the government’s spending watchdog has revealed that fraud and error in the welfare bill are at their highest levels since 2006 – with much of the rise down to the introduction of universal credit.
To go into the numbers, the National Audit Office (NAO) revealed on Thursday that benefit claimants and pensioners lost out on £2bn that they were entitled last year to because officials short-changed them. Another £1.1bn was wrongly handed out to claimants because they failed to give the right details about their income – through the complex online portal system – on time.
What appears on the surface like a fairly bland report, filled with numbers and percentages, sheds light on the scale of devastation being inflicted on people across the country. Families are being denied the support they rely on to live on because of careless errors. People are finding their monthly allowance fluctuating from a liveable amount to near to nothing, with no prior notice, as the government tries to claw previous overpayments back.
And the real stories are out there. Last month, a seriously ill father-of-two told me he was living “hand to mouth” because the DWP was withdrawing more than £90 from his allowance each month – half of which was deducted for previous debts and historic overpayments.
…
A key feature of the sweeping reform was that payments would taper off as the recipient moved into work, not suddenly stop, thus avoiding a “cliff edge” that was said to “trap” people in unemployment. If jumping from £312 one month to £5.32 the next isn’t a cliff edge, I don’t know what is.
Also at play here is the DWP’s often arbitrarily punitive sanctions regime, which penalises benefit claimants who miss job centre appointments – with often little consideration of the many variables in people’s lives. Charities have told of cases where parents have had hundreds docked after having to miss meetings with job coaches due to childcare issues.
If universal credit was designed to help people manage their own finances and make the benefits system simpler, why are we are seeing vulnerable individuals and families being swung from pillar to post, more at the mercy of the state than ever?
More on the finances:
Record fraud and errors in DWP payments
Dominic Brady Public Finances.
28th of June.
Fraud and errors related to payments made by the Department for Work and Pensions have reached record highs and are set to grow due to universal credit.
Meanwhile….
Ipswich Unemployed Action. 
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