Government study into false benefit claims criticised

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 26th, 2012 at 5:30 pm

The head of the UK Statistics Authority has been asked to investigate after an “official report” into the amount of immigrants committing benefit fraud received an overwhelming number of complaints.

The Daily Mail reported earlier this week that around 5,000 illegal immigrants are committing benefit fraud each year by abusing the UK system. This report has quickly come into question however, as the BBC revealed that the head of the UK Statistics Authority will be carrying out an investigation into how the figures were put together and presented to the media.

The report, commissioned by the Department of Work and Pensions, received a high volume of complaints from the immigrant community, who accuse it of misrepresenting the situation, and potentially causing a rise in the number of enquiries by benefit fraud investigators into innocent parties.

According to the Statistics Authority, it was not made aware of the release of the statistics and therefore quality checks usually made on “official statistics” were not made. A spokesman said: “it (the report) will look into the quality of the figures, and any commentary and explanation that was provided with them.”

The mission of the authority is to “promote and safeguard” any publication of official statistics, making sure they are accurate and fairly represented to the public. It remains unclear as to why the DWP did not submit the figures for review before releasing them.

This slip-up comes as a further embarrassment to the DWP, who have faced criticism into the conduct of their benefit fraud investigators, who have been making decisions on cases without first consulting qualified medical professionals.

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