To err is human...

... but if you do it on DWP forms, you can expect a fine.

A £50 fine, to be precise, although that's just a starting figure. It could be as much as £300.

Apparently the point of this fine is to get claimants to take "responsibility" for their claims, because "I have to fill in this form right or I won't have any money for rent, bills or food" doesn't have enough impact on your life to make you take it seriously. Or something.

Leaving aside the class war bit where a bunch of millionaires (who make plenty of "mistakes" in their own benefit claims and consider £50 to be the cost of lunch) are imposing these fines on DWP claimants who are, for obvious reasons, some of the poorest people in the country for whom £50 is two weeks' groceries or more...

I'm reasonably bright. Not exceptionally so, but I have my selection of higher-tier grade GCSEs including English and Maths, I've been able to read and write since before I started primary school, most of the jobs I've held have had some sort of administrative element. I should be as well-equipped as anyone to fill out those forms correctly, and I have a distinct advantage over many claimants who are less academically inclined.

And I have made errors on my claims.

The first one, was when I first got sick and lost my job. Let's set the scene. I'm in my early twenties. I'm sick, so sick I cannot work, and more or less confined to bed so that I can manage the big bursts of effort needed to go out (I haven't yet been taught about pacing). I don't yet know what's wrong with me, so I'm scared. I have no income and the Jobcentre have given me three forms. The biggest one is for Incapacity Benefit. The next biggest is for Housing and Council Tax Benefit. The smallest - which is still some thirty or forty pages - is for Income Support, which I am told is a "safety net" in case my Incapacity claim is rejected.

Bear in mind the reason for my claim was that I was too sick to work in my mostly office-based job. I had something symptomatically akin to 'flu. I was not in a top form-filling state.

I worked on the forms as best I could. By the time I got to the IS one, time was running out, but I did my best and felt quite proud of myself for finishing it all within the deadline.

My mistake? In the Pensions section. Having ticked that no, I was not in receipt of any pensions, I was told to go to the next section of the form. So I skipped over all the questions about what type of pension do you have to the next section of the form, About Other Benefits. What I missed, was that "War Pensions", although tacked onto the end of "Pensions", was in fact a section in its own right - a one-inch strip with the single question are you in receipt of a War Pension and Yes/No tickboxes. The form was sent back to me, red-penned and with a stern letter of admonishment.

I've also made errors on my DLA forms before now, again usually at the level of missing a tickbox, although thankfully I've always caught them before sending.

The BBC article says:

The proposals also reveal that the government assumes there will be very few appeals against these fines.

Well, yes. If my incorrectly completed form and nasty letter had also included a £50 fine, I certainly wouldn't have had it in me to argue the toss, because I was too sick to do so, and THAT was the reason why I was filling in the forms in the first place.

That's the thing about benefits. You claim them when your life gets to a desperate stage. You're sick, perhaps terminally so. Your spouse has emptied the joint account and run off with So-and-so from Marketing, leaving you with a broken heart, no money and two kids who want to know where Mummy/Daddy's gone. You've finally managed to get up the courage to get out of a violent and abusive relationship even though you took nothing with you other than the clothes you stand up in. At the very least, you've lost your job. You're stressed. You're upset. You're running around trying to improve your situation and get back something which is recognisable as Your Life, whether that means you're attending countless hospital appointments or applying for countless jobs, and on top of this, the Jobcentre have presented you with over a hundred pages of forms to fill in?

And while we're at it, let's not forget the cuts to legal aid and the closures of Citizens' Advice Bureau offices which will make it even harder for people to get help filling in forms or conducting appeals. Nice one, George. Withdraw the support, thereby increasing the rate of mistakes, then charge people for those mistakes on the basis that they'll be unable to argue. It would make a wonderful Dilbert cartoon, if only it weren't targeted at real and vulnerable people at their time of need.

Minor mistakes are inevitable when people in these circumstances are filling in these forms. Fining people who can't afford to pay but aren't in a position to defend themselves, is appalling.

(cross-posted at This Is My Blog)

System "not acceptable", says Prime Minister

System "not acceptable", says Prime Minister

In the last few months we have seen an onslaught of cuts, reforms, and changes in every aspect of our society. Disabled people have borne the particular brunt as in many cases, the schemes and funding being withdrawn from us is not so much about quality of life, as about the absolute basics of life.

Taxicard schemes are being axed, making essential journeys around town prohibitively expensive for disabled people who cannot drive or use buses. Access to Work faces severe restrictions, making it more difficult for us to enter or continue in employment. Mobility Allowance is being withdrawn from people who live in care homes which in some cases means there's no funding for wheelchairs.

But now, finally, a topic has been breached where Prime Minister David Cameron feels strongly enough to speak out. He has boldly gone on the record as stating that certain current recently-reformed arrangements devised for minimising fraud and ensuring the proper expenditure of public money are "not acceptable." He has said that he recognises that the system has "caused a lot of pain and difficulty" and has pledged to make changes to rectify this.

Given some of the cuts we've heard about, what pain, what difficulty, what kind of travesty would cause the Prime Minister to speak out like this? Is it the introduction of a new "extra-critical" eligibility threshold for Social Services assistance in Birmingham? The way the Independent Living Fund has been closed to new applicants and is set to shut down altogether in the next five years? The fact that even the creator of ESA believes that the test is not fit for purpose?

Don't be silly. It's the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) who oversee MP's expenses. Prior to these changes, MPs were allowed to self-certify their expenses, with results that we all remember well. Now, there are increased restrictions on the sorts of things that may be claimed for, and a single standardised system for submitting claims.

The National Audit Office (NAO) have stated that £13.9 million of expenses claims have not been validated because they were unable to inspect any supporting documentation. A familiar refrain is that MPs (and, presumably, their secretaries) are finding the claims process too difficult. This article from June has an absolutely beautiful collection of whinging hyperbole from MPs who have surely never seen the administrative tangle that the average disabled person is expected to efficiently handle.

At least Mr Cameron and his colleagues are clear where their priorities lie.




With thanks to Mary for this guest post