Not content with ignoring their own calculations which indicate that most of the money ‘lost’ in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) benefits system is due to their own incompetence, they are still insistent on convincing a gullible public that there is massive fraud taking place, and that disabled claimants sit at the centre of this criminal activity.
The most recent figures that I could find that had been substantiated by Hansard was that the 2023 statistics for fraud and error in the benefit system confirmed that the overall rate of fraud and error during that financial year was 3.6%. A more recent figure shows that the total of benefit fraud amongst disabled claimants was only 0.5% of this figure.
So, how does this justify them spending some £70 million on Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to hunt down these claimants who are allegedly costing the country billions of pounds? As reported in Disability News Service (DNS) one Conservative MP Sir Desmond Swayne asked Peter Schofield, the most senior civil servant in the DWP whether there were “shades of the Horizon scandal” over its use of such technology? All Schofield could reply with was: “I really hope not.”
DWP’s annual report and accounts revealed last year that it was using machine learning to prioritise which universal credit claims to review for potential fraud. But the National Audit Office reported that using machine learning in this way creates “an inherent risk that the algorithms are biased towards selecting claims for review from certain vulnerable people or groups with protected characteristics”.
The disabled people’s organisation the Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People (GMCDP) continue to work with the justice campaign group Foxglove over concerns that the algorithm could be “over-picking” disabled people for its benefit fraud investigations.
Neil Couling, the DWP director-general responsible for universal credit said the DWP would report in this year’s annual report and accounts whether there were “particular groups with different protected characteristics impacted unintentionally by this kind of activity”.
But he also admitted that other countries had “got themselves into quite a bit of a pickle” when they have “tried to use this sort of technique”.
Read the full account in Disability News Service.
Descriptions of cartoon for those using screen reading software
The Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is stood alongside of a Dr Who Dalek which has ‘DWP Fraud Detector’ printed upon it. In front of them is a large board with the heading ‘DWP Fraud profiles’ along with images of different disabled people portrayed on it. On the floor at their feet is a copy of the Stun newspaper with the headline ‘DWP uses AI to investigate benefits fraud’. Sunak is telling the Dalek: “This is what most of them look like – so feel free to exterminate whoever you fancy!”
Crippen Cartoons 