A conversation between two DWP staff, overheard by myself and several others, on a site, several years ago:
DWP1: Did you hear about X (male DWP worker)? He's been suspended.
DWP2: What for?
DWP1: Signing on whilst working, apparently he was doing it 5 times.
DWP2: That's just too much, everyone's fine with you doing it 3 times.
DWP1: I know. Five times is just taking the piss.
Now, nobody would of believed this. People would just assume it was two malicious people twisting the knife in to the unemployed people in ear shot. But then nobody would have believed a famous jewelry mogul would stand up and declare his products as shit and having less value than a prawn sandwich (Gerald Ratner for those wondering).
Math time again (62 a week * number of signings * 4 weeks a month):
Suspended dude was getting £1,240p/m
Those two DWP staff were getting: £744p/m each
Legitimate single sign-on claim gets: £248p/m
I'm willing to bet 'reasonable' money that a DWP advisor pays about £700 in tax a month all told (tax, NI, council tax, VAT on purchases, etc.), so they were quite probably working tax free.
Now I'm not suggesting for a moment that this was wide spread, nor am I suggesting for a second that ALL staff are doing this or that the rules haven't changed over the years since hearing this to stamp it out. But I am suggesting that two people in the DWP were claiming their tax back, at that point in history and were intimating that everyone else in the office was doing likewise.
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