Benefits sanctions: do they hit your bottom line?

Jazani’s post linking to the Tory election poster promoting/ threatening a crackdown on benefit recipients got me thinking about providers and benefit sanctions.

With the shift to outcomes payments, benefits sanctions are not just about preventing cheating, gaming and scamming to ensure the integrity of the social welfare system as a whole, they’re now revenue protection for prime contractors. That is, if providers are going to be paid on sustained job outcomes then it’s even more important they have robust back up (ie threat of sanctions) to make sure clients comply with a provider’s efforts to get them trained and sustaining a job.

So, given its implications for providers’ bottom line, what kind of pressure could or should providers put on DWP to improve the benefit fraud system?

And, if you’re a provider, do you report your suspicions of benefit fraud or not bother because you think it’s a waste of time?

Or do you think, like Community Links, that claimants tend to commit fraud from ‘need not greed’ and that the system is unfair?
(http://www.community-links.org/linksuk/?p=1697)

The BBC looked into the Tories’ election promises (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/parties_and_issues/...) and apparently only 69 people were convicted of fraud three times. I don’t know if that’s because most claimants are honest (good) or learn their lesson after one conviction (also good) or that the system isn’t good at detecting and convicting(bad).

Here’s a link to Hansard with recent figures on DWP and local authority benefit fraud figures:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmhansrd/cm100317/text...