The director of public prosecutions, Kier Starmer QC, has announced that you could now be locked up for ten years for benefit fraud.
This vicious threat is part of the anti-welfare propaganda barrage that has led to people thinking, on average, that 27% of benefit is claimed fraudulently. The real figure is 0.7%.
In fact, money lost to benefit fraud is tiny compared to the benefit money that goes unclaimed, leaving many in increased poverty. Yet Starmer says such fraud should be at the ‘forefront of lawyers’ minds’.
Putting the £120 billion annual tax evasion and avoidance, largely by the rich, to the fore would certainly be a greater source of money. But then the biggest tax avoiders can afford the best lawyers.
Labour faces both ways – again!
Labour has refused to pledge to scrap the bedroom tax – and told off anyone that says it will.
After their Scottish welfare representative said that a Labour UK government would abolish it, a Westminster Labour spokesperson replied: “It goes against what we are saying – we haven’t made that pledge to date.”
