THE Government's determination to tackle benefit fraud as part of its planned wide-ranging reform of the Welfare State was spelled out yesterday by Stirling MP Anne McGuire who is Scottish Secretary Donald Dewar's Parliamentary Private Secretary.
To illustrate the size of the problem, she told a conference organised by the National Local Government Forum Against Poverty that there were now around 20 million more National Insurance numbers than there were people living and qualified to hold them.
They had to face up to a situation that, on conservative estimates, fraud was costing some #4000m a year, she stressed.
It had to be recognised that some people did defraud the system, some of them because they were trying to enhance their income because of the penalties of taking work.
However, she added: ''Why should we tolerate housing benefit fraud which currently costs over #1000m a year and is almost never effectively dealt with? We are not helping those in need if we do not face up to this challenge.''
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