Benefit Cheats Face Telephone Lie Detector Tests (UK)

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 4-5-2007 | George Jones

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Benefit cheats face telephone lie detector tests

By George Jones, Political Editor
Last Updated: 2:54pm BST 05/04/2007

What is voice-risk analysis? How to beat a lie detector test Lie detector technology will be used by the Government to help identify and deter benefit cheats, John Hutton, Work and Pensions Secretary, announced today.

Lie detector test technology has moved on significantly in recent years

Voice-risk analysis (VRA) software, already used by the insurance industry, will be used to monitor telephone calls by claimants. It can detect minute changes in a caller's voice which give clues as to when they may be lying.

VRA analyses changes in voice frequency and performs thousands of mathematical calculations, identifying different categories of emotional content which enable it to identify genuine callers.

At the beginning of each call, the characteristics of a customer's voice frequency are sampled to establish a benchmark. This is used during a conversation as a guide for analysing changes in frequency caused by changes in emotions.

Callers will hear a standard message before they speak alerting them that the technology is being used.

If benefit staff assess the answers as suspicious, the caller may be asked to provide further evidence to support their claim. Final decisions will still rest with staff.

The system will be piloted by Harrow Council, in north London, for housing benefit and council tax benefit claims. Mr Hutton said the "cutting edge" technology aimed to tackle fraudsters while speeding up claims and improving customer service for the honest majority.

According to Government figures, benefit fraud has been reduced from about £2 billion in 2001 to an estimated £0.7 billion in 2005/06.

Philip Hammond, Conservative work and pensions spokesman, said the Government was coming up with "more Big Brother technology" when the real problem was the complexity of the benefit system.

He said more money was lost through error, with £2.6 billion worth of benefits overpaid last year, than through fraud.

"The real reason fraudsters find it so easy to con the British taxpayer is the complexity of Gordon Brown's benefit system. We need a simpler, fairer system with fewer loopholes for fraudsters to exploit," Mr Hammond said.

[TheSpottedOwl]

Interesting. While I believe that welfare cheats should be kicked off the rolls, lie detectors aren’t even admissible in our courts. In fact, yesterday a young man took one for the Dr. Phil show.

The test was administered by a former FBI agent and professional polygraph expert. In this young man’s case, his test showed nothing but stress, even though he wasn’t even moving. The expert came “this close” to recommending a full physical. The young man was slightly overweight, so I don’t know if that had any bearing on the results.