BrianH
At the Start
Lie detectors plan to trap benefit cheats
Miles Brignall
Friday October 14, 2005
The Guardian
Lie detectors could be used to catch benefit cheats in an attempt to reduce the £1bn lost each year to fraud.
The Department for Work and Pensions announced yesterday that it was looking at a package of measures to combat fraud, including voice stress analysis, which is already commonly used by the insurance industry to weed out false claims.
It also revealed plans to start trawling through data held by credit reference agencies in a bid to identify claimants who appear to be living above their means, or are giving a different address to the one held on government files.
Benefits minister James Plaskitt said: "We have already made massive reductions in benefit fraud, cutting it to under £1bn, less than 1% of total expenditure. In fact, we have cut fraud in Income Support and Jobseekers Allowance by nearly two-thirds. However, we recognise that there is still much to do. These powers are groundbreaking."
A departmental spokeswoman said the ministry was also looking at making greater use of "risk profiling" - using computers to identify the age and location of claimants most likely to abuse the system. "Lots of claimants make perfectly legitimate claims, but fail to tell us when their situation changes. They might move in with a new partner, and by doing so, slide into benefit fraud. Until now, living-together fraud has been very hard to detect - these measures in total should save the tax payer £40m a year."
Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the civil rights group Liberty, expressed concerns about how the information would be handled. "The DWP's new powers will allow access to the personal details of many benefits claimants because a few have abused the system."
Miles Brignall
Friday October 14, 2005
The Guardian
Lie detectors could be used to catch benefit cheats in an attempt to reduce the £1bn lost each year to fraud.
The Department for Work and Pensions announced yesterday that it was looking at a package of measures to combat fraud, including voice stress analysis, which is already commonly used by the insurance industry to weed out false claims.
It also revealed plans to start trawling through data held by credit reference agencies in a bid to identify claimants who appear to be living above their means, or are giving a different address to the one held on government files.
Benefits minister James Plaskitt said: "We have already made massive reductions in benefit fraud, cutting it to under £1bn, less than 1% of total expenditure. In fact, we have cut fraud in Income Support and Jobseekers Allowance by nearly two-thirds. However, we recognise that there is still much to do. These powers are groundbreaking."
A departmental spokeswoman said the ministry was also looking at making greater use of "risk profiling" - using computers to identify the age and location of claimants most likely to abuse the system. "Lots of claimants make perfectly legitimate claims, but fail to tell us when their situation changes. They might move in with a new partner, and by doing so, slide into benefit fraud. Until now, living-together fraud has been very hard to detect - these measures in total should save the tax payer £40m a year."
Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the civil rights group Liberty, expressed concerns about how the information would be handled. "The DWP's new powers will allow access to the personal details of many benefits claimants because a few have abused the system."
