WHERE are the banner headlines? Where are the apologies? Why has the recent admission of the Department of Social Security this month not made front-page news?
The Benefits Integrity Project was established in a blaze of publicity designed to clearly stigmatise those in receipt of disability benefits and other social security payments. Cheats, scroungers, and layabouts were the common descriptions deployed in relation to those rightfully claiming the benefits to which they are entitled.
Now we find that out of 55,000 who have been assessed by the Benefit Integrity Project, there have only been 70 cases of suspected fraud! The Benefits Integrity Project was set up at a cost of #11.5m a year and was expected to make savings on fraud of #7m, #10m, and then another #7m on a staggered basis over three years.
However, now the DSS Policy Director for Disability Benefits has been forced to admit that ''at present we have made no savings from fraud''. It all goes to show clearly how innocent people are so often accused of activity which they are clearly not guilty of.
Hopefully you will now give more prominence to encourage pensioners, the disabled, and others to actively claim the benefits to which they are entitled in order that the billions of unclaimed benefits are actually claimed rather than having so many millions denied their rightful incomes.
Tommy Sheridan,
Convener,
Scottish Socialist Alliance,
City Chambers,
George Square, Glasgow.
May 28.
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