Bounty hunters to cut benefit fraud by £1bn

I have to laugh at the OP - the last labour government introduced some of the most intrusive laws in modern history, all in the name of "the war on terror" (remind how someone putting too much rubbish out is terrorism) and yet when a new government wants to target fraud and save billions in the process, they are the stasi?

One of the coalitions promises is that they would roll back some of the invasive laws brought in by labour - there's a thread on it somewhere.

This stinks of party politics worse than blairs armpits after a tough question.

reply to post by budski


I think the point is that they intend to use 'intrusive' measures to monitor and detect benefit fraud.

It seems it is ok to use 'intrusive' measures when it suits and furthers political ideaology.
Cameron assured us that there would be less of the Big Brother style monitoring yet here he is increasing it.

Perhaps he should devote as much effort into reducing Corporation Tax embezzlement which is estimated to cost this country more than Benefit Fraud along with the tax avoidance of the highest earners and the nefarious activities of the horribly corrupt scum who bleed us dry from Westnimster and Whitehall!

And do you trust any political party or organisation to safeguard the information discovered whilst conducting these searches?

reply to post by Freeborn


I trust none of them.

My point is that that the OP has derided the current government, but neglected to mention that the previouss government was much more invasive.

reply to post by budski


The current government have yet to reveal any details of plans to repeal the previous governments 'invasive' measures despite their denouncements.
In fact they seem to be continuing their policies.

Talk is cheap.
Acts and deeds.

Question:

Would the govt have to pass any new legislation to enable these agencies to trawl through and cross-reference financial data to find the potential benefit cheats?

My thinking is that the day/date a bill is passed in parliament allowing them to do this, they could do so, but wouldn't legally apply retrospectively.

For example, the law requiring permission to protest within a mile of parliament was passed, but as the protester Brian Haw had set up his protest PRIOR to the bill being passed, could not be removed through retrospective application of the new law

Therefore I could switch the account a giro was paid into the day before the bill was passed, so the authorities would only have the legal ability to search that particular recieving account, but not retrospectively search the account previously used.