British Treasury Loses £2.6bn/year From Fraud
The British Treasury is losing £2.6bn a year from fraud and error in the benefit system – caused largely by the complexity of its regulations, parliament’s spending watchdog warned yesterday.
The National Audit Office said the errors had been so substantial for the past 15 years that it was obliged to issue annual qualifications of the accounts of the responsible departments. Successive governments responded with promises to simplify the system. But the Department for Work and Pensions has not yet found a way to provide benefits that are both fair and easily understood by claimants and the staff who deal with them.
Sir John Bourn, the head of the NAO, said complexity was one of the most important issues affecting the department’s performance. “There is a balance to be struck between a system which is detailed enough to respond to needs and yet straightforward enough to be run efficiently … This balance has not been reached,” he said.
The department pays more than £100bn a year in social security benefits and pensions to about 30 million people. The NAO said it should devise new benefits to reduce complexity and use technology to protect claimants from getting bogged down in the fine print.
Read more at Guardian Online »
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