Would libertarians snoop on benefit cheats?
Dear libertarians,
Seeing as Parliament is on leave for a couple of weeks, I’ve got the chance to pick up on a curious story that might grab your attention. Apparently, a new scheme to clamp down on benefit fraudsters is ‘under consideration’ for the Labour manifesto. While this is hardly news in itself, I thought it raised some very interesting points for libertarians.
A new fund allowing the Government to pay people who notify authorities about benefit cheats would be created under proposals being examined by Labour’s manifesto team. In a proposal reportedly put to Ed Miliband, Labour’s manifesto co-ordinator, the resulting savings to the state made by clamping down on benefit fraudsters would be paid to people who inform on them. The idea, allegedly from the Scottish secretary Jim Murphy, is also said to have been discussed by Downing Street as a way of making life harder for benefit cheats. Whistleblowers will be rewarded for successfully identifying council house tenants who are subletting their taxpayer-funded properties. Such homes are used for prostitution, the growing of drugs, illegal immigrants and other illicit activities. No 10 was said to be attracted to the idea as a symbol of what was described as a tough contract on fairness in which Labour offered support for those genuinely in need on the condition that they play by the rules, The Guardian reported. While the Government has a benefits hotline, it is the first time a minister has suggested that anyone who reveals a benefit cheat might secure a proportion of the money recovered, or that there should be a financial incentive. Critics claim it could lead to malicious accusations and difficulties for officials who are left to decide whether the person who disclosed the cheater to the authorities was in fact responsible for them being caught.
In Australia, billboards urge people to “dob” on their cheating mates, leading to an upsurge in tipoffs. Last year, the Department for Work and Pensions claimed to have caught 56,493 benefit thieves. It claims more than 677 calls a day are made to the hotline. A further 476 benefit thieves are understood to be reported online every day. Around 6,000 benefit cheats are convicted every year with latest figures showing benefit expenditure cost around £116 billion. The government believes that for every £1 billion of fraud and error, the estimated cost to every taxpayer is £35. Fraud and error in the benefits system cost £3 billion last year, a rise of £300 million, but the Department has previously said benefit fraud was half of what it was in 2001. Of course, offering money for ’snooping’ is nothing new. In July last year, for example, it was announced that neighbours were being offered rewards of up to £500 of taxpayers’ money to spy on other residents. They were given cash for reporting offenders who let their dogs foul pavements, drop litter, dawb graffiti or fly-tip. However, I thought it raised some slightly awkward questions about civil liberties and also libertarian values.
First and foremost, you support the rule of law. That’s not to say that libertarians don’t get mighty p***ed off when the Government tramples all over our freedoms, but by and large the police are there to enforce the law and libertarians tend to go along with it (unless they are more anarchic in nature, I suppose). As the police are there to enforce the law, benefit cheats are presumably an acceptable police target as far as libertarians are concerned. However, this seems to get rather complicated when the issue of ’snooping’ is thrown into the pot. If you believe in the rule of law, would you dob on your benefit-cheating mates? Coercion and being forced to do something are not acceptable as far as libertarians are concerned, but does reporting benefit cheats class as ‘interfering’ with someone else’s liberty? Without being reported, a benefit cheat might never be caught and it is entirely possible that no-one outside of the state would be affected by the cheat’s actions i.e. no-one else’s liberty would be impinged. What if a libertarian learns of someone cheating on their benefits by accident (e.g. overhears a conversation) – are they even ‘allowed’ to report them to the authorities, given their love of personal freedom and hatred of a Big Brother state? Is ’interfering’ with /snooping on someone’s illegal activity acceptable to libertarians, given that you don’t subscribe to doing to other people what you wouldn’t be willing to have done to you?
Sorry, bit of a confused letter this morning. This is yet another issue where libertarian values seem to conflict with themselves. I appreciate that libertarians are not a homogenous entity, in the same way that there are lots of different types of conservatism. That said, snooping on benefit cheats and other people who bend or break the law for their own advantage doesn’t seem to sit well with your view of the world.
Discuss!
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
It’s not an issue about Libertarians; it’s about whether you want to live in a society where everyone spies on one another, where children grass up their parents for having a sneaky fag and where your neighbours go through your bins to see if you’ve done your recycling. East Germany had a similar system under the Stasi.
If you think you have to be a libertarian to oppose that, I sincerely hope that this view is not held by the incoming tory government as otherwise we just get more, brutal, social control.
On the other hand, why not ask if you would ring the police if you saw someone stealing your neighbour’s car?
Of course you would. So why not ring the benefit office if you see someone you know is claiming unemployment taking cash in hand to work?
Isn’t it stealing in both cases?
Shaun, does this mean dobbing people in is not in our collective best interests? ‘Snooping’ is a very loaded term, but simply reporting illegal behaviour doesn’t sound quite so bad, no?
Julia, one is stealing from the state, one is stealing from an individual. Given that libertarians hate the state and love individual freedom, your question sits nicely alongside my post.
My point, LFAT is that encouraging people to spy on one another is designed solely to serve the state. It is divide and rule, based on envy.
Of course libertarians don’t support theft. Life, liberty and property are the big three. Doesn’t matter if that property is stolen by the state or by a scrote, doesn’t matter if that liberty is oppressed by the police on behalf of the state or my your neighbours working for them.
I think reporting friends and family would be a bit much, bloods thicker than water etc etc. But if you lived a few doors down from someone who you knew was on the sick, but played football every weekend for his local team (or such like) I wouldn’t feel bad about making the call. After all the people who steal from the system reduce the funds available for the genuinely sick/disabled etc.
It depends, surely, on whether the report made to the authorities is true. If a neighbour reported me for stealing a car then it would be fair enough. If they persistently reported me when I was doing nothing of the sort, then it might get a bit tiresome.
The fact that we are talking about benefit cheats is a red herring. We could be discussing whether to report someone for stealing from the till at the local authority sports centre; theft from the State is no better & no worse than theft from your neighbour.
The real issue, and the one to which the “benefit cheats” context is relevant, is that Labour are trying to give an impression that the savings needed to repair the damage they have inflicted on the nation’s finances can be achieved by simple efficiency measures – i.e. that we will not suffer any real pain as a result of their incompetence. If they genuinely think that, then (a) what planet do they live on, and (b) why didn’t they do that years ago?
Didn’t some beardy chap address this issue a little while back with the curious phrase ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone’
I don’t recall any Politicians ‘dobbing’ each other in over the theft of Taxpayers money during their expenses fraud.
@LFAT – “Julia, one is stealing from the state, one is stealing from an individual.”
But LfaT, ‘the state’ doesn’t have any money. That money comes from US, the taxpayer. So they are just as much stealing from me as any other burglar…
A very interesting topic today…
Surely this scheme is already in place… its called crimestoppers. People have been able to “dob in” those engaged in criminal activity in exchange for cash for several years.
The mention of benefit chiets getting hit as a possible inclusion in a Labour manifesto is just a cynical bit of “spin” to lasso the “Daily Mail” and pension brigade voters.
However I’m all in favour of financial incentives for certain things. For example a smoker costs the NHS a lot of money in treatment. Offer a reward of say, £100 a year if someone is proven to have kept off the drugs or tobacco plus a lump sum if they go 5 years.
Reward positive behaviour – not negative. Thats the second half of this policy. Once you start recognising the good in people then the bad starts to become unappealing . Reward someone for getting back into work – and staying there. Reinforce good citizenship and pride in our nation and its people in other words – not use it as a carrot to entice middle England votes.
For libertarians the issue is moot. Libertarians wouldn’t have a welfare state, so there is no dobbing-in to be done.
How long before New Labour offer incentives for those who report ‘dissent’ or those they hear disparaging the state, i.e. policy or the leader? Don’t you feel that Labour would just love to do it? (In which case I’m stuffed!)
A gross exaggeration? For the time being, sure. But look how many ‘offences’ or acts are now being interpreted as terrorism or being dealt with under terrorist legislation. How long before dissent is included; purely for the benefit of ’society’, of course.
No they wouldn’t, because a truly libertarian welfare system would be a regular flat cash payment, just sufficient to cover (very) basic living costs, for every legal resident, with no questions asked and no strings attached (i.e. like Child Benefit – not to be confused with Child Tax Credits!!!).
Experience with Child Benefit and state pension shows us there would be little or no fraud, over- or underpayment, or administration costs (about 0.5% either way), so there’d be nothing to actually snoop for in the first place.
If I donated to the welfare state of my own free will, then I certainly would report fraud. As I don’t, the money ceases to be my responsibility once it has been extorted, so I wouldn’t.
The system lacks any logical coherence, so that it is perfectly possible for someone to claim entirely within the rules and yet still be gaming the system, as it possible for someone to make a fraudulent claim and yet not be morally in the wrong.
Libertarians are not all of one mind on all things. Personally, I’m not a libertarian because I want to make the world a utopia or to make people happy. I’m a libertarian because I want the government to leave me alone, and the libertarian party is the only one that would give me that result.
There are a lot of laws I currently disagree with, and a lot of things that we are meant to pay for that I would rather not. For each one I weigh up the possible penalties of being caught, the chance of being caught and then decide whether to obey/pay or not based on the likely cost to me of disobedience. Similarly, if the chance was presented to “cheat” on benefits, I’d weigh up the benefits and potential cost (and bear in mind how much I’ve paid into the system) and decide rationally whether or not to do it.
It’s worth bearing in mind that a lot of the time, “cheating” on benefits simply means not telling them of a change in circumstances. It must be a pain to have to tell the government every time your wages change, particularly if you’re taking any work you can get. They seem to make it really hard to actually work and better your situation. If you want to lounge around all day and do nothing then that’s fine, it seems.
I’d also point out that the current system is retarded. I work full time and so get no benefits. My fiancee works part time. If my fiancee and I split up but kept living together because we couldn’t afford to get separate places, she’d get something like £12k per year in benefits, more if she quit work. They reward people for splitting up – do they really want to encourage everyone to sleep around, have kids and not stay with a single partner for any length of time?
So, would I report someone that I knew was cheating? That really depends. I might do… Particularly if I’d get a reward for doing so. On the one hand, I dislike the state and the fact that it takes my money. On the other though, some part of it is my money that’s being wasted. In an ideal world we’d get rid of the welfare state, replacing it with some form of CBI, payable to all citizens – so in the ideal world there would be nothing to report, but this world is far from ideal. I think it would come down to three questions. “what’s it worth to me?”, “Do I like this person?” and “Do I think they’re doing anything I wouldn’t?”
Quick points: Roseleen said “…a smoker costs the NHS a lot of money in treatment. Offer a reward of say, £100 a year if someone is proven to have kept off the drugs or tobacco plus a lump sum if they go 5 years…”
That’s fine in theory, but what about people who have never smoked? How long do I have to smoke before “quitting” to get my £100 a year? They’re already rewarded by the savings on the cigarettes – isn’t that enough? There’s also the fact that the government loses money when smokers quit – the tax on cigarettes is a lot more than the “cost” to the NHS.
Andrew Duffin said “For libertarians the issue is moot. Libertarians wouldn’t have a welfare state, so there is no dobbing-in to be done.”
I’m guessing that the question was aimed for a libertarian living under some other form of government.
Dear LFAT. I’m broadly in agreement with Shaun – admittedly an unlikely occurrence.
There is a whole lot of difference between turning a malefactor in as a public duty (Which we are required to do by Law)and turning him (or her) in for a reward. Having to be induced to carry out a public duty indicates that the person involved will protect his society from wrongdoing only if he can see a material gain by doing so. By implication, he sees the society in which he lives as “other” not “mine” – an attitude which supports IDS’ “broken society” argument. Furthermore, the reward effectively legitimises grudges, which may well be part of a hidden agenda of motives in reporting the miscreant. There have already been press reports of people with a grudge falsely accusing innocent people through motives of envy or revenge, and until a method can be devised by which a prima facie case of alleged wrong-doing can be established independent of the informer, we should tread down the road to expansion of the present scheme very gingerly. There are, after all, only small steps from a vigilent society to a vigilante society to a police state.
@Roseleen – “For example a smoker costs the NHS a lot of money in treatment.”
More or less what the government takes out of that smoker in tax and NI contributrions, plus VAT and tobacco duty on the items themselves?
Take your time…
As a Libertarian, I want the government to stop bossing me about – I don’t equate it with not reporting a crime.
That said, I’m also a great believer in minding my own business. Would I report a benefit cheat? Depends on how egregious it was frankly. Claiming the dole and working cash in hand… don’t think so – making up kids and claiming for them… probably yes.
OK so the evil word smoking was mentioned! oh Pur-lease! PMSL!
Replace the nasty word with any other word of your choice: alcohol, dangerous sports, class A drugs, yada yada yada
The point I made was about encouraging acceptable behaviours by means of personal financial incentive.
Please don’t throw your Barbie out of the pram at mere mention of the evil “S” word.
So, thus far, the answer to the question of whether libertarians would snoop on benefit cheats is ‘maybe’ because libertarians don’t believe in the welfare state in the first place but, assuming that it does exist, they don’t really like people scamming the system?
xx While the Government has a benefits hotline, it is the first time a minister has suggested that anyone who reveals a benefit cheat might secure a proportion of the money recovered, or that there should be a financial incentive. xx
Maybe the first time suggested by a Minister, but it was common practice in Merseyside in the 80s to be paid for “grassing” someone to the dole.
I saw the cheques that my Sister got for it. So don’t try and tell me id did not, DOES not happen already.
Why would you want to alter the terms of labours debate on this? What they are proposing is no more than (yet another) busybodies charter. What will result is a lot of hot air, wasted police time, and probably yet more petty jobsworths sticking their noses in and making a nuisance of themselves.
And perhaps a new way for those disposed to bone idleness to earn a few bob from my hard earned taxes.
In anycase, the benefit system is already to complex for even an expert in it to work out whether a particular claim is fraudulent or not.
My take?
If I found evidence of somebody fiddling benefits, I would consider reporting them. As it (theft from a large organisation) isn’t the most heinous crime in the world, it would have to be balanced against the time and effort it would take to do, the quality of the evidence I had (overhearing somebody saying something – double hearsay – almost the quality of a New Labour press release) and my personal view of the significance of the crime.
I wouldn’t take a reward for it nor would I go looking for it – that’s the job of the fraud investigators at the DWP, all of whom would be out of a job in a hypothetical libertarian Britain.
BTW – it is startling just how few crimes the generic ‘you’ have a legal duty (in E&W) to report. And, for most of those, the “legal duty” is a fiction established by the “strict liability” on you for possession or knowledge of certain things without legal excuse. Money laundering is perhaps the closest but that only applies strictly to certain “professional occupations”. Hard drugs, paedo etc – simply no duty. Terrorism Act 2000 s19? Only if it “comes to his attention in the course of a trade, profession, business or employment.”
@Surreptitious Evil – Okay, have just checked. The offence of “misprision of felony” was abolished by the Criminal Law Act 1967. “Misprision of Treason” is still an offence.
XX alastair
February 10th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
What will result is a lot of hot air, wasted police time,XX
And since WHEN did the police have the SLIGHTEST thing to do with benefit fraud?
The welfare state encourages abuse, and because of the obscene Marginal tax rates (if you include benefit withdrawal) you can regard benefit cheating as a poor man’s tax evasion. As crime goes, that is one I have the most sympathy for. The benefit cheat is simply obeying the brute economic incentives he’s given and can hardly be blamed.
Added to the fact that I am uncomfortable with encouraging snooping by the population on each other, because I think this is a slippery slope down which leads totalitarianism, I think on balance, no. I wouldn’t.
@Roseleen, who is throwing things out of one’s pram? Methinks it is you. Commenters only pointed out a simple flaw (it is not the only one) in your argument about smoking. As for your “acceptable” behaviours spiel, I can think of one place where you can put it.
That said, your point about crimestoppers is well made and right. There is absolutely no reason to separate the reporting on benefits from car stealing for example. But it just fits in nicely with the politics of envy, so loved of labour (and increasingly the tories it seems).
Funnily enough, I have not heard talk of bringing to book the people responsible for creating a system allowing that amount of fraud.
As for trying to trip libertarians, I would say that there is no need for welfare state in libertarian land because we believe in the good of people to take care of others (not a new idea by the way).
Libertarians may have contradictions, but being criticized by people who just want more of the same failed policies takes the biscuit.
This is the Internet. Post without preparation, and someone WILL eat your lunch..
And who gets to define ‘acceptable behaviour’? You?
In other words it’s Nu Labour’s ‘Cones Hotline’..?
Keep it sweet Julia
you’re making the internet mistake equivalent of catching your skirt in your knickers
Now play nicely
“So, thus far, the answer to the question of whether libertarians would snoop on benefit cheats is ‘maybe’”
Would you really rather live in a country where, when asked to spy on one another, the people just said ‘yes mein commandant’?
The reason your post is so confused is because, yet again, you are tying yourself in knots trying to catch libertarians out.
Leaving aside how libertarians would pay benefits, for now, we would expect people to report egregious abuse of benefits and systematic breaking of the law, without the need for inducements.
As others have pointed out, these inducements would drive a wedge through society and probably do more damage through the mistrust they engender than good, as witnessed in East Germany.
I think The Great Simpleton has hit the nail on the head with his response, which is the general conclusion I reached in a letter I have written in response over on my blog.
Since you kindly asked my opinion, here it is.
…the resulting savings to the state made by clamping down on benefit fraudsters would be paid to people who inform on them.
This does not sound like what I understand ’savings’ to mean. It sounds rather more like the state creating a new class of client: benefit informers. Perhaps doing such a thing will not cost more than the current system, but I have trouble believing it would cost any less – ergo, what is the point? The state will not reduce its expenditure thereby, and my tax bill will not decrease. The only possible financial benefit to me of this scheme would be if I myself became a paid informer.
And if I became a paid informer, then I would have no more claim to the libertarian high ground than a benefits claimant (fraudulent OR legitimate), because I too would be taking the king’s shilling.
If there are those who want to dob in benefit cheats, fine. They may think it duty, they may do it out of spite, they may do it because they don’t like to see their taxes paid out to the undeserving. But paying such people to do the dobbing both nullifies any potential ’savings’ resulting from cracking down on cheaters and creates a new group of people who derive income from the state.
Shaun, I thought that’s what Labour wanted us to do?
TGS, I’m not trying to catch anyone out. It strikes me as a very genuine contradiction so I’m looking for other people’s thoughts and ideas – hardly the most sinister post I’ve ever written!
Bella, thanks for joining the discussion. I suppose it would take a slightly bizarre person to claim on the one hand how much they hate the state and the way that it interferes with their life all the time, only to take a quick £500 from the very same state by dobbing in their neighbour.
Monoi – I hear what you say )- but I did say at the time smoking was an example – not the whole.) if i made myself unclear to all then I apologise for using the worst imaginale example – my bad
My whole point was to attempt change to behaviour – instead of eastern european tactics to “dob” in a person, use the reward as a carrot to the cheat as an incentive to get out of the cheating habit and into more acceptable “behaviour”
By all means encourage reporting “as the right thing to do” but not for a financial reward. Prosecute the benefit fraud then offer the financial carrot to break the pattern of reoffending.
Its how we teach our children – by reward. So applying the tactic to adults who have already encountered the reward system may actually work.
Going ack to the smoking scenario (and the reasons I used it) Many years ago I worked for a chap in a small company who detested the habit. 70% of his sales staff smoked (not including me by the way) He offered the smokers £250 to stop and a further £250 if they were “clean” a year later. 80% of the smokers stopped and stayed stopped. Perhaps thats what the NHS should consider if they REALLY want to stop smokers.
Just a thought
LFAT” It strikes me as a very genuine contradiction ”
Your asking people how they would respond to a given situation, when the answer is that they would never support the given situation happening in the first place.
The issue isnt so much that libetarian values have ineherrent contradictions, but more that they may be forced to compromise those values, because of un-libetarian policies put through by the goverment.
Myself, i would dob them in, unless they where a friend (blood & water etc). Stealing is still stealing, but as said i would never support the situation happening in the first place, e.g the basic citizen income.
ROSELEEN”Its how we teach our children – by reward. So applying the tactic to adults who have already encountered the reward system may actually work.”
Oh dear, you really should not compare free adults to children, but anyway.
How would you feel if I took by force £10 pounds from you, so that I could pay my neighbour for eating fruit as opposed to a Mackie D.
A bit miffed would probably be an understatement?
So why is it when the government is suddenly taking my money, to pay for you to “behave” is it acceptable?
And if a private company want’s to offer incentives, that’s their business.
I’d be livid. But then I’m livid that fake claimants get given my money to carry on being socially obnoxious.
The money will go their way whatever – but if push comes to shove I’d rather it resulted in a positive result than a continuing negative one
Just my opinion on how I’d like my contributions spent….
“I’d be livid. But then I’m livid that fake claimants get given my money to carry on being socially obnoxious. ”
So scrap the benifits system, introduce a basic citizens income.
Problem solved.
“The money will go their way whatever – but if push comes to shove I’d rather it resulted in a positive result than a continuing negative one”
So scrap the benifits system, introduce a basic citizens income.
Problem solved.
The goverment should have no hand in either dictating, or promoting particular lifestyles, other than enforcing the common law
It is more likely for a libertarian to see a fiscal crime against the state as a crime against all individuals, as that money came from and should go to serving the tax payer.
A mugger steals my wallet. A second mugger mugs the first mugger. Should I laugh?
The first mugger now asks me for my help in catching the second mugger. Should I laugh now?
It’s an interesting question. There are three issues tangled up here: privacy, property, and the welfare state. The reflex dislike of the state and welfare tends to confuse the basic principles, so let’s say your neighbour is stealing from somebody else. Then it’s a simple competition between privacy and property. I believe in privacy, and I believe in property. Can they be made compatible?
So to start with, it’s wrong to steal, even from the government (or indeed any other thief). Like most wrongs, it might sometimes be the lesser evil, but it’s always an evil. But when it comes to privacy I’d still say somebody needs probable cause before they can ’snoop’ beyond information clearly in the public domain. (And what you do in the public street can still be private if you can have a reasonable expectation that you’re not under any special scrutiny.) Privacy trumps property.
However, reporting people based on public information, or private information you come upon unintentionally, should be freely allowed, if the individual decides, but should not be compulsory. Think of it as free speech.
But the morality of it is an open question, like any other act of speech. It will usually depend on the details of the particular case.
The first mugger now asks me for my help in catching the second mugger. Should I laugh now?
::[applause]::