Flexible New Deal | New Deal Scandal: Leading Welfare Reform Concerns

As a Jobseekers Allowance claimant myself (when my claim hasn’t been stopped or suspended for trivial reasons such as not attending an interview they never told me about) I am not surprised that the National Audit Office (NAO) has reported a £1.2 billion under spend last year.

To stick this figure into prospective (remember it is the DWP as a whole not just JSA) if the figure comprised totally of Jobseekers Allowance at the higher rate of £60 per week, it makes 10 million payments of 20 million benefit weeks not being paid out, or 384,615 claimants a year receiving no Jobseekers Allowance at all even though entitled to do so by law.

In fact this raises a huge question about DWP, Jobcentre Plus; and their repeatedly unlawful tactics and techniques to take ones legal entitlement away, which I will explain later in to the article. As the Jobseekers Act 1995 (as amended) makes it your legal entitlement and the Jobcentre is doing the best to avoid paying that money out to you this comes under fraud in my definition and as such this £1.2 billion under spend will be categorised as a £1.2 billion fraud.

This is on top of the £750 million under spending on the Tax Credits system – resulting in 1.2 million claims not being made. We recently reported about the Jobseekers Allowance Scandal and the quarter of a billion pounds a year Housing Allowance cut. Read more on New Deal Scandal »