“Benefit fraud and error is the one area of ingrained waste that outranks all others”

The Prime Minister has been in office not even for a year and he’s already bringing in dubious acts and intentions that could seriously undermine confidence in the British Government which already faces problems with confidence after years of Gordon Brown’s unique leadership.

His comments remind me of another politician equally famous for being stupid:

“I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.”

Former President George W. Bush

There is two issues with his plan of using companies to seek out the benefit fraudsters. Firstly, the fact that they are companies, so any organization stands to earn money by finding benefit cheats through the bounty system. Justice can never be a monetary oriented goal. The moment that happens the strength of the justice system has failed us. Second, protection of personal data – the Data Protection Act.

The ministerial body of which the data protection act is associated with, the Information Commissioner Office has made a statement regarding Cameron’s plans. They have requested a meeting with the welfare officer responsible for the oversight of this plan to answer questions over privacy concerns.

Isn’t it interesting how if we make an error, we are responsible yet if the state makes an error, we’re responsible It seems that now is the time to reconsider how our political system operates. Let us begin with dealing with the cost of political expenses.

We shall look at a honourable member of parliament for our example.

David Cameron Salary: £188,848 (Parliament Research Paper)
Housing Benefits: £21,293.86
Communication Benefit: £65.50
Net Income: £210207.36

Now lets compare that against those horrible benefit cheats:

Joe Blogs Undeclared Minimum Wage Salary: £11563.50 (based on October’s new Minimum wage of £5.93).
Housing Benefit: £5256
Job Seeker’s allowance: £2600
Net Income: £19415.50

Alright, so we can see that David Cameron can pay this benefit cheats annual income with fraudulent benefits out of his own housing benefit and still have change. This cannot be just.With any luck then, perhaps the Government will be the first that faces the wrath of the new credit industry investigating benefit fraud. Until such a time as the government can prove itself worthy of policing this level of personal data it is essential that the Information Commissioner finds in the favour of the right to privacy of information of the people as it could be a very slippery slope to slide down once we start hunting for evidence of potential benefit frauds by organizations who has it in their best interest to find guilty parties as that is how they will be getting paid.

Perhaps then instead of targeting the money that people use to survive the daily commute to work David Cameron should concentrate on bosting financial aid. Increase benfits, or increase Minimum Wage.

Efforts should be made to bring down the cost of living in the UK or increase the financial security of the average person. Incidentally, MPs as a whole occur the tax payer a £40Million bill, people like those listed to the left, cost a hefty amount more.

Can you belive that some of these benefit fraudsters dont even have a second home? (or third and fourth in the case of our prime minister).

TheyWorkForYou.com rate David Cameron’s cost to the tax payer beyond his salary at £152,179.

References
Caledonian Comment
The Express
The Express 2
The Mail Online
TheyWorkForYou.com