A warning has been issued to Universal Credit claimants as it was announced that Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) staff would be given the power to arrest people as part of a new crackdown.
As many as two million claimants will have their cases investigated and could be issued fines, even if they are not convicted of a crime.
DWP officers will also be permitted to request bank data en masse more easily in order to identify if people are defrauding the UK Government.
READ MORE — What a £300K Glasgow home looks like in different neighbourhoods around the city
As reported by The Mirror, staff will then be able to make arrests, execute warrants, conduct searches and seize evidence themselves instead of leaving the work to police.
Even in cases where the investigation does not proceed to court, they will have the power to hand out civil fines like those issued by HMRC.
There is currently no confirmed start date for the new rules, and are unlikely to be brought into effect for at least another year.
The majority of the powers would need an Act of Parliament and it is believed this would not be introduced until May 2023 at the earliest.
Shadow Employment Minister Alison McGovern stated that the Conservatives “left the till open to organised crime” during the pandemic.
She said if ministers were “serious about fraud, they would have taken action to get back the £11bn” lost to “dodgy PPE deals, loans and grants”.
The proposed rules are part of £200m-a-year benefit fraud crackdown that, according to ministers, will save £670m per year.
It follows the news that benefits overpayments as a result of fraud and errors soared to a record high of £8.3 billion in 2020/21.
The Fighting Fraud plan was jointly unveiled by Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey and ‘efficiency’ minister Jacob Rees-Mogg.
It reaffirms a pledge previously made that 2,000 staff members would be hired to sort through two million cases, from new claims to existing ones that have been marked as suspicious.
While it has been reported that cases could be sorted by data matching and algorithms, officials have insisted that human staff members will be responsible for the reviews.
These new agents are already in to process of being recruited across the UK, and the DWP aims to have them ready by autumn of this year.
According to The Mirror, sources has insisted only a small number of staff members would have access to the sweeping new powers to arrest claimants.
However, in cases where claimants are unable to be prosecuted through court, they could instead be hit with a fine under civil law, which will be a fixed percentage of the amount of suspected fraud.
At the moment, the DWP can only request bank data of an identifiable individual, but the proposed Act would expand this to make it more easy for staff to request details of claimants whose cases have a “signal” of potential fraud.
Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey said the crackdown would stop the benefit system being "a cash machine for callous criminals".
She added: “Thousands of trained specialists, combined with targeted new tools and powers, will mean we can keep up with fraud in today’s digital age and prevent, detect and deter those who would try to cheat the system.”
It came as MPs were warned blind and mentally unwell people in the UK are set to “fall off a cliff” as 2.6 million Brits are moved to Universal Credit.
People on six ‘legacy’ benefits - most of them long-term sick or disabled - will be transferred to Universal Credit between this summer and the end of 2024.
But charity chiefs raised fears about a three-month window for them to claim under the new system, after which their old benefits face being stopped.
Tory ministers assured MPs there will be at least an extra month’s extension if people fail to apply to UC, with the DWP contacting them directly.
But Dominic Milne of the Royal National Institute of Blind People told the Commons Work and Pensions Committee the time limit “seems to be a big mistake.
“The extra month, yes that may be helpful, but it’s not enough. There will still be people falling off the cliff in that respect.”
He added: “It seems a very risky strategy to be taking so many people and basically taking a lot of chances with their income.”
Sophie Corlett of mental health charity Mind said: “We know people absolutely struggle with the process because it’s online, they may not be well enough to engage, they may not have the cognitive ability to engage in some circumstances.”
She warned having money cut off would be “devastating” in a cost-of-living crunch.
