Corporate media stoking more hate and division – this time, pensioners vs DWP claimants

In case you missed the memo, the new Labour Party government-led Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) isn’t taking tough enough action on the sky-rocketing rates of benefit fraud. According to the Daily Express, the new left-wing Labour government is playing “it down” and instead punishing millions of pensioners.

Except of course, aside from that very last part, that’s all utter bogus. Because to those of us in the real-world, not some far right fever dream, it’s quite the opposite.

For one, austerity Osborne in blood red lippy – the neoliberal new chancellor Rachel Reeves – is uncontestably a right-wing stooge for the corporate capitalist racket. Next, benefit fraud is a favourite right-wing fabrication. And far from playing it down, the new government has been cranking up the benefit claimant “crack down” with almost palpable glee.

It is punishing pensioners. However, it’s not because of benefit claimants defrauding the system.

DWP benefit fraud versus the winter fuel payment

On Sunday 4 August, finance columnist Harvey Jones penned an article for the Sunday Express. In a blatantly divisive strong start, the headline blared:

‘Stop bullying honest pensioners Labour and smash UK’s £8bn benefit fraud industry’

What follows is a piece of rancid whataboutery, contrasting “honest pensioners” against the supposed “crooks” claiming benefits “dishonestly”.

Naturally, it’s chock full of all the benefit claimant-bashing buzzwords you’d expect. Macho calls to “smash” benefit fraud? Check. Platitudes to “hard-pressed taxpayers”? Of course. The “cheats” and “crooked claims”? You got it.

However, as the Canary has consistently pointed out, benefit fraud is largely a bogus, right-wing construct.

Jones claimed that:

In the past, the left has downplayed the impact of benefits fraud because the payment “error rate” was just 0.7% of the annual bill.

Since the pandemic, the error rate has quadrupled to 2.8%, and it’s climbing steadily as more people make more crooked claims knowing they’re likely to get away with it.

Specifically, Jones underscored how this equated to over £8bn in fraud in 2023/24. Only, this isn’t actually the case. For one, Jones is conflating ‘error’ and supposed ‘fraud’. The 2.8% doesn’t include either claimant error (a further 0.6%) or errors the DWP (0.3%) has made. But more importantly, the fraud itself mostly didn’t happen. This is because the DWP lumps many reasons for overpayments into its fraud category – and these aren’t intrinsically fraudulent.

Moreover, previously, the Canary’s Steve Topple unpacked this with similar statistics in 2020/21. He highlighted that much of this purported fraud was in actuality, “based on assumptions and guesswork”.

No evidence of DWP benefit fraud

In particular, Topple demonstrated how the DWP assumes that those that failed to engage in a review process were making fraudulent claims. Of course, as he pointed out, it does so “without any evidence to back it up”.

For 2023/24, this amounted to over £1.1bn for Universal Credit alone of the department’s total supposed fraud.

Similarly, he also highlighted the DWP’s so-called “high suspicion” causal link cases. These revolved around claimants’ changes of circumstances that the department was unable to confirm. This encompasses changes to employment, housing costs, and living circumstances for example.

Again, in these instances, there’s still no evidence for the DWP to classify it as fraud, but it does so anyway. Once more with this for 2023/24, the DWP assumed billions more in overpayments were inherently fraudulent. In reality then, much of Jones’ moral panic over the £8bn in “crooked claims” is entirely unwarranted – because it isn’t actually fraud.

Fairytale fraud of the future

On top of this, Jones turned to the fictitious far-flung fraud of the future. That is, the recent annual report’s projections for DWP benefit fraud rates over the next five years. He stated how:

the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said it expects benefits fraud to increase by 5% every year for at least the next five years. That will add up to a staggering £30billion in total.

However, the Canary has already shown why this is too patently false. Specifically, we noted that the DWP:

based this claim solely on a flawed evaluation promulgating an “inexact science” (the DWP’s own words, not mine). In short, the DWP assessment looked at the so-called “propensity” to commit fraud overall. Moreover, this pertained to entirely disparate forms of crime, unrelated to benefit fraud. So it couldn’t actually show trends for DWP benefit fraud specifically: meaning of course, that the 5% figure is effectively bogus.

Then, Jones showed his true colours. As it turned out, he’s not actually all that concerned about the government going after “honest pensioners” after all. He wrote that:

Yet Reeves needs to be consistent. If she’s squeezing honest pensioners and tax avoiders, she needs to chase benefit fraudsters with the same vigour.

In other words, by all means, Labour can cut the winter fuel payment and plunge hundreds of thousands into fuel poverty. But only so long as it also ramps up its benefit fraud-busting clamp down. Or, as those claiming benefits know already, make the welfare system more inaccessible, punitive, and oppressive.

Manufacturing consent for more austerity

Of course, demonising benefit claimants and pitting them against each other is the point of the article. It’s the right-wing corporate media’s bread and butter. Articles like this pave the way for more austerity – punching down on those the system marginalises, to justify further state violence against them. Invariably, this also emboldens bigotry in all its forms.

Right now, we’re witnessing one violent result of all this. As far-right fascist lynch mobs enact pogroms across the country, benefit “scrounger” rhetoric is wrapped up among their racist, Islamophobic, and anti-migrant rampage.

The Canary won’t link any and give oxygen to the vile tirades, but this is currently rife on social media.

Ostensibly, manufacturing consent for more of the same doesn’t need hard facts. It just needs the hard right dressed up in the veneer of the corporate media’s supposed reputability.

Ultimately, the Daily Express article simply backs Labour’s narrative. It loans weight to the government’s “tough choices” on cuts propaganda. It’s setting the stage for social security cuts elsewhere – because that’s the inevitable result of a “crackdown” on supposed DWP benefit fraud, and Labour know it.

Feature image via the Daily Express/Youtube/the Canary