So our sparkly new government are planning to bring fire and brimstone down on all those benefit cheats.
Just like all the incoming governments that went before. And with precisely the same result. Nothing but misery.
Here’s why
The front line troops of the benefit army consist almost invariably of young people, many of them recent school leavers who have taken the job until something better comes along. Or until they get promoted under the dead man’s shoes system and get replaced by yet more ex-schoolchildren of no life experience whatever.
There are no doubt some keen and experienced interviewers about. But you’d have to trawl more than a few offices to locate one.
And facing them across the desk they eye two types of claimant.
The two types
First, and in the majority, are those represented by the over-60s man who will never get re-employed and who earns a few illicit pounds by building a porch on his neighbours house; the single mother who takes an undeclared job cleaning other people’s lavatories for a few hours a week; and the youngster who, disillusioned by the string of courses and short term jobs is attempting to build a grass cutting round.
And the second is represented by the hardened and experienced fraudster, knowing far more than the interviewer all the ins and outs of the benefit system and how best to exploit its many loopholes. A man or woman seasoned in lying, ready to employ some verbal aggression if necessary, and probably in contact with others who can teach yet more wily ways to manipulate the system.
When one of our great leaders declares a clamp-down – giving the firm impression they will be taking personal control of the battle – all that happens in practice is that a stern warning is issued to the benefit chiefs – a warning promptly passed on and down – that ‘Something Must Be Done’.
Guess who the Something will be done to?
Certainly not the hard to handle, often aggressive professional fraudster, that’s for sure.
Every now and then we hear great trumpetings in the media about some professional fraudster caught and punished. But the very fuss created demonstrates the rarity of such success. A success almost always set in motion not by some skilled work of detection but by some careless slip-up by the over confident criminal.
Which results in months of investigation by whole teams of ‘detectives’ and ends with the criminal repaying some of his stealings.
And with his fellows, having been alerted by his detection, free to carry on as before, totally contemptuous of those appointed to stop them.
Instead it will be the mild, once in a lifetime transgresser who will be confronted, humiliated, bullied and terrorised by the smug, never been anywhere, never experienced anything investigator. Who will brandish his warrant card and proudly announce his powers of search and interrogation – greater than that of the police, he will emphasise – as well as his power to stop all benefit payments forthwith, without need for proof or reason.
Precisely the people our great leader has vowed to protect.
Image: Paul Kehrer under CC BY 2.0
