Can't see a problem with this - even looks like a good idea. (Better re-read & consider at length).

Until of course, knowing the efficiency of Obersturmbahfuhrer Smith's department, the shennanigans start when someone's on the list despite still being highly alive......

Doubtless they will then be despatched, in order to make Jackboot Jacqui look better...

The need for this was drawn to the world's attention in 1930 via The Maltese Falcon.

... someone gets put onto the list who *isn't* dead and has their pension stopped. Wonder how long it will take to get removed from the list?

You can just imagine the conversation; "I'm sorry, we can't deal with your query as you are dead. In order to be removed from our list you will have to provide proof you are not dead."

Meanwhile, said person dies of a heart attack through the stress of proving they're not dead...

The new list has also led to a handful of home office employees conducting a particularly cruel form of fraud called milking those who are mourning via various methods. Grieving people are easier to con, fact of life.

So all in all a win win for the government employees, get to rid the world of benefit frauds (a noble goal) and get to line a few nasty peoples pockets who exploit others misery (not so noble, but big in governments the world over.)

O well.

Firstly, "morality screening"?? I'm fighting back the rising bile as a department of Government claims to have any sense of the word morality.

Fortunately for them the dead are hardly likely to complain once their details are found on abandoned USB key, laptop, PDA, etc etc etc.

Mind you, the more likely and ironic outcome is that ID theives will nick and clone the information to run off a batch of dodgy docs for migrants...

Well given the Government's recent record on data protection, I can see the possibility that instead of preventing fraud, this weekly list will become the fraudster's bible!

Sounds great, until you engage your brain and think about it.... something the politicians won't have done.

What happens when these private companies make a mistake? A false positive for a fraudster? What will happen is that someone who should be getting a pension will suddenly stop getting one, and they will be labelled a fraudster/liar, so good luck getting the problem resolved!

Inevitably, in some pretence of encouraging competition or an attempt to spend less the government will start to reward the private companies more for the more fraudulent pensions they stop. This will lead to immense pressure on those who are entitled to the pensions to justify themselves to beaurocrats, and gaming of the rules by the private businesses trying to get more cash from the government.

Its the same with the dole.... after 30years of right-wing government in the UK (yes, that's what nu-labour meant in '97, a "labour" party that ignores unions etc.) there are many many people in the DWP who's salary and promotions depend purely on saying no to people who are out of luck and a job, and just need to sit in the safety net for a few months.

I don't know what the solution is to these issues, but I do know that capitalistic business methods don't seem to work too well when applied to social security measures.

"The scheme began at the end of September"

Ahh, the Home Office and it's ID card marketting scheme. Mortality screening is not new, only this new data feed done via the 'Identity' service is new, as opposed to the previous Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages.

http://www.applegate.co.uk/company/10/73/117.htm#

"FTB has been trading for over 32 years being the longest established tracing agency in the UK today with ISO 9001 accreditation. Specializing in MORTALITY SCREENING and tracing missing beneficiaries we are working with some of the largest pension schemes, pension consultants and insurance companies and have achieved ISO 9001 accreditation."

I did have to think about why this feels fine, I guess it's because who's dead is already essentially public knowledge? So this is just better provision of existing information?

No, it will be possible to be taken off the list.

Eventually. Somehow. After spending several years fighting through the bureaucracy. Hey, pensioners can easily afford the legal fees, can't they.

Sorry Sir, you can't make an appointment to prove that you're alive, because dead people can't make appointments.

I suppose hanging a sign around your neck saying "I ATEN'T DEAD!" won't help?

You can't make it up

http://www.globalaging.org/elderrights/world/2008/Bureaucracy.htm

Plus also, we now have a group of (un)civil servants that can "lose" all that data - and the bad guys will have a good idea of where to look for lots of juicy info.

They will never learn.

Just think of all the benefits of being officially dead.

You no longer pay any taxes.

You can not be arrested.

You can eat where you want and claim that the food is a religious offering so you don't have to pay.

You could annoy Richard Dawkins by phoning him up and claiming he talks to dead people.

The only downside I can see is your gf/bf being arrested for Necrophilia

Anyone care to add a certain Jacqui Smith to it, before she just admits her real name is O'Brien?

....It's so easy.

1. Issue a National Insurance number when a person is born.

2. Delete the NI when a person dies.

The only slight problem is finding the NI if the person dies alone. Make sure no death certificate is valid without an NI.

I counted then all out, and I'm counting them all in!

makes it easier for fraudsters to gather everything needed to prove that they are in fact this person, and are not actually dead.

Pensioner: "I'm not dead yet!"

Government: "He says he's not dead yet."

Mortality screener: "He'll be stone dead in a minute."

Pensioner: "I feel happy."

Government: "Sorry, there's nothing I can do."

Mortality screener: "Can't you come back? He'll be dead in a minute."

*pause*

*thwack*

Government: "Right, here's a bundle of cash."

/coat

Anonymously, as I don't want to be lynched for the probable inaccuracies above.

If the government have the information on who has died and they have the information on who is trying to claim a pension from them, why do they need to employ a private profit-making entity to compare the two sets of information?

... the list is inevitably left on an unencrypted USB stick on a train.

"I don't want to be lynched for the probable inaccuracies above."

Don't you mean probable accuracies, Wacky Jacqui knows best remember.

"...So this is just better provision of existing information?...?

Not a chance old lad. It might be "essentially public knowledge", but HM Gov's record with truth isn't exactly reassuring, is it?

Incorrect information on their uberdatabase will no doubt take fourteen years, three acts of parliament and four appeals to the highest court in the land to correct. Plus of course the time taken for whichever ungodly miscreant is Home Secretary to be "...carefully studying the ruling...".

Pah!

A curse on them and a plague on all their houses!

.... "The other 399 pensions are from illegals" ?

LOL, misread of the day - you singlehandedly lifted my spirits from a pre-solstice fog of despair to gales of laughter. Remember to cross your eyes and dot your tees. :-D

Nitpick: yes, yes, yes, solstice's over and it's Christmas but we can't go about discriminating against non-Xians, right? Although me being one I would think I'd be allowed to...

And with strange eons, even death may die."

I would like to welcome our Elder Statesman overlords and claim the post "Quisling Traitor in charge of Political Correction^H^H^H ness"

Hasn't worked too well so far - the old Hatches, Matches and Despatches list has been around for many years but the bastards still manage to steal IDs. What makes zaNu Labour think They can stop this, or get this project to work any bettter than their other IT frackups?

But maybe that's it - just as They need to re-write such obviously "faulty" legislation as the Obscene Publications Act, the various Anti-Terrorist and "peace-keeping" laws and all the other rules and regulations we have lived with since that idiot 'signed' the Magna Carta, They obviously feel They need to re-create the Registers of Births, Deaths and Marriages in their own distorted image...

Never mind Cthulhu and his pals, it looks like Wacky Schmith and Godrun Brown are intent on living on (in infamy) forever...

Feel the flames of Hell, fanned by the work of incompetents...

I am reminded of a project conducted jointly by Ohio and Pennsylvania, roughly 30 years ago, and glowingly lauded at the time by its director in the weekly IT paper "Computer World". Lists of welfare recipients in the two states were matched in order to catch double-dippers collecting welfare in both states.

They found a vanishingly small number; sorry but I don't remember, but it may even have been a big fat zero.

A letter to the editor set matters straight: what kind of project is called a success when it costs a $million or so, but yields no useful results? Far more was spent on trying to find malefactors than the money saved by catching them.

As then in the US, so now in the UK.

It seems obvious to me that if you have a social safety net of any description, it _will_ be abused. The trick is not to use draconian methods to drive the abuse level down to zero and thereby almost certainly screw over some innocent people. The trick is to recognize that the abuse is just a cost of doing business, and try to keep it under reasonable control without going to extremes. Not too different from retail businesses in relation to shoplifting.

Moreover, the more finely meshed your safety net—that is, the greater the number of people and conditions it attempts to deal with—the higher your abuse level.

Somehow this project smells of another attempt to zero an abuse rate, without regard for the innocents who will inevitably be swept up into a bureaucratic nightmare. It is an example of the "perfectionist" attitude in the Home Office that ignores human nature in matters large and small. (I won't name names, having sworn not to mention a certain loathsome female in charge there.)

Someone needs to ask the question in public, preferably in Parliament: when someone is wrongly included on this list, what mechanisms are in place for _rapidly_ correcting the error? If someone's pension gets wrongfully cut off, is there an emergency source of funds for them until the error is resolved? Or will they be left to starve in the dark and cold, a frozen, desiccated monument to the arrogance of you-know-who and her heartless minions?

PS: for some reason, this little rant reminds me of the Monty Python "Dead Parrot" skit.

@ I smell FAIL -- it's actually 'mortality screening' (note the 't' in 'mort'). It's a shame really it wasn't 'morality sceening', it would have chimed so well with our cynicism and night terrors about this Govt. Perhaps next time.

It stops those pesky Rock stars spending a year dead for Tax reasons.

I'm completely lost as to why a first world Government is completely unable to track the vast majority of births, deaths & marriages effectively. Oh sorry we handed out NI numbers like confetti instead of linking them to something simple like a birth certificate / grant of citizenship.

Rather than circulating a list, why not have a web service (on a private intranet open to selected few using a suitable three part authentication system, hey we could even make it biometric just to prove ID cards work). The nominated users from the private enterprise sign in and run a simple web client into which they enter data regarding a prospective / existing client. The web service returns a few possible replies:

LIVE

DEAD

CALL POLICE

The queries could be monitored for abuse, patterns of attempted claims and so reduce fraud. Maybe we could ask someone with experience of detecting fraud patterns to help, hmm maybe the credit card companies might have suitable algorithms? Oh I forgot its govt so something that would take almost a week to set up will take years and cost billions.

It might reduce the likelihood of the list being splashed across the internet.

Well what other Icon can I use?

Some years ago some of my bank documents were mis-delivered and whoever actually received tham chucked 'em back in the post with 'Deceased' written on the envelopes...

It took me weeks to get it sorted out.

If it had happened to a pensioner with no other finances they could well have been dead before it was fixed..

.. a killer app. Argh.

Trust this government to come up with a solution without bothering to clearly identify the actual problem. Ah - no, I understand that one. "It's us" is probably a bit embarrassing to put in a press release, isn't it..

Mine's the one with a mere scratch..

The Social Security Death Index has been openly available in the US for many years, and there are several web sites giving this information for free. Why then does the UK have to give "carefully selected" companies the right to charge for this information?

Yes, you are, list says so.

Get on the cart!

Just another chapter in (the bankrupt) UK.gov's master plan of selling all the information they collect on UK citizens to the highest bidder.

The one's i know about so far are:

DVLA

National DNA database (for select 'research' purposes, aye right)

Voters Roll

In the pipeline for the future:

Selling your medical records (after being securely anonomised of course. They'll probably get expert consultation from Google first)

Punting as much off the National Identity Register as they can

Selling details about your daily travel habits (when Road Pricing 2.0 comes in) AND passing any alleged infringments to the Police to enable them to collect fine revenue

Selling the info about your kids from Contactpoint to the highest bidder

If we vote these cretins in again, then we deserve every bid of what they have planned for us...

Mine has "campaign manager" across the back and absentee ballots in the pocket.

"zaNu Labour"

LOL!