Just occasionally, a government comes up with a proposal that is so sensible it makes the opposition’s kneejerk criticism seem pathetically misjudged. So it is with David Cameron’s plan to use data from credit agencies to trap benefit cheats who are stealing £5.6 billion annually from the taxpayer. Opponents will have to do better to explain why this is an incursion on civil liberties when exactly the same information is used on a routine basis by banks and retailers to judge customers’ creditworthiness. If a benefit claimant is spending £2,000 a month on his credit card while supposedly unfit to work, it is the government’s duty to pick this up. The cost of respecting benefit cheats’ civil liberties by declining to use such data is £100 a year for every man, woman and child in the country.
This said, the problem of benefits fraud will never be solved so long as our welfare system continues to pay claimants to do nothing.
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