Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuart
The fiddling is undoubtedly there, but I doubt it's as prevalent as the media would have you believe. My reason for this? Simple. I know people who are claiming, and most of them do have genuine reasons for their claims.
That's not hard evidence by any means, but then neither is a newspaper article showing one man climbing mountains while claiming benefits evidence that mass fraud exists.
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The trouble is that people can easily lie about working off the books for example, living with someone, subletting council property, hiding assets, exaggerating/feigning symptoms, their identity or any number of things which might affect their entitlement too or the level benefit they receive. You might feel you 'know' they have circumstances/issues which can be claimed for but if you don't know all the detail of what they're claiming it's impossible to say if or to what extent they're abusing the rules. Having said that I think most people would have a great deal more sympathy for someone who's genuinely suffering in some way and claims a bit too much than someone who sets out to defraud the system for as much as they can.