Govt checks on benefit abuses

Press, 12 March 1983, Page 11

Govt checks on benefit abuses

PA Wellington The Government is investigating social welfare benefits to try to reduce the number of people abusing the system. The Prime Minister, Mr Muldoon, has said at a postcaucus press conferencethere was no doubt there was a “significant leakage” in the social welfare area. Benefits were being paid to people who should not be getting them, and a caucus' committee had been given the task of devising an improved system to stop the incorrect payments, he said. The Government caucus had yesterday morning been given the first of a series of departmental reports on problems with welfare payments. Mr Muldoon said that although some of the incorrect payments were being found.

“the department believes that a good deal of it is not.” “It is a question of how to tighten up the rules to minimise that kind of thing.” It was impossible, he said, to put a figure on how much the problem was costing the taxpayer because there was no means of making an estimate. It was known that benefits were being paid wrongly because many of them were being discovered through routine checks and information from the public. “If people are getting benefits to which they are not entitled, the revenue is being attacked and the taxpayer is paying more than he should for the social welfare system,” Mr Muldoon said. “We are looking to amend the procedures to make this less easy, or the detection of it easier."