Benefit Cheats

The petition is entitled set up a public website that names people (with their home addresses) who are claiming benefits and explains what they are claiming. (generic descriptions only, i.e. invalidity benefit etc.) Then if a neighbour suspects that they are claiming fraudulently they can report them to the appropriate authorities. The tax payer has a right to know where his money is going and we have to reduce the number of people in this country that have for generations, decided to live on benefits and exploit every possible loophole in the benefit system as a lifestyle choice rather than go out to work like the rest of us do and the explanatory notes say

"This could reduce the number of benefit cheats by half and perhaps we would not have to be so reliant on economic migrants to do the work "we don't want to do.""

Eeeeee, the civil liberties issues!!! The woolly liberal in me (most of me) is screaming wildly.

On the other hand, benefit cheats are the scum of humanity - I particularly take exception to people claiming disability/invalidity benefits unjustly. I knew a man once who claimed to have been incapacitated by organophosphate sheep dip. He limped around town, hanging on his wife's arm, or hobbled using a stick and told everyone how ill he was and how his life was blighted and so on. Then he strode out through his back garden and took his dogs on long walks, every day. I did report him. But as far as I know nothing's changed. Conversely, I had a housemate who was genuinely incapacitated by ME. Men like the cheat make her life harder, by making people mistrust all invalidity benefit claimants and by taking some of the money that could otherwise be being spent on genuine claimants. So they piss me off.

However, this isn't a solution. Quite aside from anything else, I'm having kittens at the thought of, say, battered wives being on this database and consequently their abusers being able to find them. (Sure, one could safeguard against it by theoretically ensuring that they were exceptions and not put on the website. But you can bet some would fall through the net accidentally and stuff. Argle.) It would be a logistical nightmare updating it and things. The privacy issues don't bear thinking about. We're forever being told about the risks of identity theft, and I can only think that this would increase the risks of that.

And moreover it's unnecessary legislation. If you suspect your neighbours are claiming benefits unjustly, you should report them. If it turns out they're not claiming benefits, well, OK, it's taken someone some time to check it out - but that's got to be less effort overall than this logistical nightmare of a proposition!