LIE DETECTORS TO TARGET BENEFIT CHEATS

As you will have learned from these columns in the past, if you are poor in Britain, you can get help from the state. Depending on circumstances, authorities will reduce or suspend your council tax, give you money while you are out of work, help to pay your rent, cancel charges for drug prescriptions, arrange free eye and dental care – even, in certain cases, assist with expenses for births and funerals.

Clearly this leaves the taxpayer vulnerable to unscrupulous cheats and liars, who cost the country £800 million per annum. Now the government is to introduce lie detectors to catch them.

Con tricks

One of the commonest con tricks is to conceal or under-report the money you have in savings. An Uppingham woman claiming to be destitute said she had only one bank account. In fact she had six and they contained savings of more than £16,000.

Another woman failed to declare a private pension, and a man aged 73 accrued £16,000 over five years by claiming benefits when he had £92,000 in the bank plus interests in four properties worth £350,000. He also spent £4,200 on a luxury cruise with his wife.

Claiming sick money whilst fit is also frequent. Most people know a fellow around the corner who has been on benefits for months, if not years, for a “bad back,” yet quietly does painting and plastering jobs, at a fee, for his neighbours.

Others are actually in formal employment, they just do not say so. One such cheat claimed housing and council tax benefits while having three jobs. He was found out by a sharp-eyed government official who noticed paint speckles on the face of his wrist watch.

Usually these miscreants are taken to court, fined and ordered to pay back the misappropriated monies. Sometimes, not often, they are jailed. It is a tedious process and it is rare that the Treasury ever recoups the full cost of the crime.

Last May, the Department for Work and Pensions asked Harrow council in west London to try out Voice Risk Analysis technology, which highlights suspicious responses in a speaker’s voice. In just three months, the pilot scheme exposed 126 benefit cheats and saved the council £110,000. Use of detectors could be routine as early as next year.

Pioneers in the use of this technology include insurance companies, which have calculated that as many as 15 per cent of claims include some sort of fraud. A typical case: The householder gets home from work to find the kitchen window smashed and his iPod and all his CDs and DVDs stolen. Oh, well, he thinks the insurance will pay. So why not add a few extras to get a bit of the premium money back? Maybe claim the camcorder was pinched, too?

Voice Risk works by measuring slight, inaudible fluctuations in the human voice known as micro-tremors which indicate that a speaker is under stress.

Stress changes

Patterns are analysed and displayed on a computer to indicate when those moments of stress are generated by an attempt to deceive. Stress changes are measured against normal voice at the beginning of the call to ensure that shyness or genuine nervousness are not the cause.

The Harrow technology was tested only on people claiming housing or council tax benefit but will be extended to the local job centre where claims are made for other benefits.

One drawback, as outlined by an American expert: “Lie detector tests have a tendency to pass people for whom deception is a way of life and to fail those who are really honest.”

* * * * * *

The French call them frites, the Americans call them French fries, we call them chips and a lot of our children think they grow on trees.

Research by the British Heart Foundation found that one in three British school children had no idea that chips came from potatoes; they thought they grew on farms – the same thing they thought about pizzas!

With figures suggesting that almost half of all our children will be dangerously obese by 2050, there is a bit of a panic here about food and diets, especially among the young. New rules ban school dinners with high fat and salt content and provide pupils with at least two portions of fruit and vegetables with every meal. Deep-fried food is on the menu only twice a week; sugary drinks are frowned upon and many schools have got rid of their drink machines.

What seems counter-productive is that some schools do not provide dinners while others open the gates at lunchtime and students take their pocket money to the nearest takeaway to feast on chips, pizzas, crisps and chocolate bars.

* * * * * *

A regular news item concerns a sick person battling to get the authorities to pay for treatment which has been refused for a variety of reasons – usually cost-cutting in the National Health Service.

In Southwark, London, there were fears of such a move against children suffering from the rare blood disorder, sickle cell anaemia, which is found mainly in people of African descent.

Life-threatening

The usual treatment is insertion of a needle into the stomach for eight to 12 hours per night. The aim is to help clear life-threatening excess iron from the blood of patients that builds up as a side-effect of regular blood transfusions.

Daniel Nwosu, aged 10, had these agonising injections five times a week until experts came up with the drug Exjade, which was trialled among a number of black children. Two tablets per day in place of the injections transformed their lives.

Daniel’s mother, Carol, said in June she feared the treatment would not be funded by their primary health care trust. Now there is good news: the council has confirmed that Exjade will be available to all who need it.

Sometimes our institutions actually do work.

* * * * *

As well as written warnings, like SMOKING KILLS, they are now talking about putting horrible pictures of cancerous throat tumours on cigarette packets.

This could save 2,500 lives per year through terrified people quitting the habit, though my bet is most dedicated smokers will turn a blind eye.

Reminds me of the guy who went into the shop for his usual brand and got a pack which said SMOKING MAY REDUCE BLOOD FLOW AND CAUSE IMPOTENCE. “No thanks,” he said, “give me the one that says SMOKING KILLS.”

* * * * * *

Descartes is the philosopher who famously asserted “I think therefore I am.”

One day he went into a pub and quaffed a pint of beer. Asked if he would like another, Descartes replied, “I think not” and vanished.


SOURCE: DAILY NATION