According to one of its own press releases, the Government is wasting approximately £167 million each year due to error and mistakes in the Benefits system.It's OK though, they've not had a shock momentary lapse into honesty, as ever with a Government press release it's what isn't said that is most revealing.
The official line is that the Department of Work and Pension is going to launch "drive to reduce money lost to customer and official error in the benefit system which is expected to save £1billion by 2012".
Thus, by implication, witout the drive they concede the system is not fit for purpose and would lose a billion over the next six year without change (roughly £167m per year). Given they've been in power for ten years and been tinkering all the time, I dread to think how much they've lost due to error in that time.
3 comments:
I have the antidote to such bad news. I console myself by pretending that my tax pounds have actually been spent on something worthwhile, while telling myself that only other people's money has been wasted.
I think you're really missing the point Dizzy. I've looked up some statistics on tax credits.
In 2003/04 they estimated total take-up expenditure at £20,320,800,000
Thats over £500 each for a total of 40,000,000 tax payers.
In 2003/04 £2,200,000,000 was overpaid. Thats £55 each for every taxpayer.
If tax credits were abolished they would be able to extend the 10% tax bracket by over £4,000 for everyone.
Brown wants to create a sickening dependancy on him in the lower classes. I wonder if it would be possible to get elected with a commitment to abolish tax credits and replace them with an extra £4,000 10% allowance? Or maybe people are too dependent already.
I dont expect anything else than waste, ineficiency and fraud from this government. Clearly this is old news.
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