The worst thing about these policies is that loads of genuine people will get caught in the net and denied access to something they should really have. Especially if the people reviewing claims have a target to hit in terms of reducing the number of successful claims. If you’re close to the line your claim will be in the bin. Then it will cost even more to appeal and maybe go to tribunal etc.
The general public love these kind of policies as they have this idea that they’re getting cheated out of their tax money and it makes them feel better if they think someone is trying to fix that.
The fact is that millions of £ are wasted every single day in every area of the country and that’s just part of the cost of running a country of this size.
Once you add the admin costs of these polices i would imagine it’s hardly worth doing and you’d likely get a better return on redeploying the thousands of civil servants that will be required into reclaiming tax money from something bigger (actual tax fraud for example).
it is my understanding that benefit fraud is nowhere near the top fraud out there yet it gets a disproportionate amount of publicity