A GOVERNMENT campaign to put the work ethic back at the heart of British life is to be launched in Scotland today by welfare reform Minister Frank Field.

In choosing to launch a UK-wide debate north of the Border the controversial Minister is both tapping into Scots traditions about the work ethic and confronting head-on his critics, including those in his own party, who branded benefit cuts to lone parents ''economically inept, morally repugnant and spiritually bereft''.

The SNP was quick to highlight this quote and to claim that Mr Field was the hard-edged Minister who reflected Tony Blair's talk of ''compassion with a hard edge''. They claimed his visit to lecture Scots on the virtues of hard work only served to show that the Scottish Parliament should be in charge of administering the social security system.

But Mr Field sees himself as part of a crusade to change British attitudes to welfare. He announced a further crackdown on fraudsters yesterday, giving his staff new powers to add interest on top of any sum to be clawed back. ''The administrative penalty now provides the Government with a broader and more flexible range of sanctions to tackle benefit fraud,'' he said.

Later yesterday he arrived in Scotland to deliver a lecture at St Andrews University, amplifying his theme about the need to change attitudes. This crusade will be formally launched today in a speech to the Scottish Council Foundation in Edinburgh where he will claim: ''Every single one of us has a stake in rebuilding the welfare state. Today marks the start of a nationwide debate.''

Arguing that ''we have to replace the culture of claiming with the culture of working,'' he says paid work is the surest escape route from poverty, bringing not just money but self esteem, family role-models and communities free from social exclusion.''

But SNP Treasury spokesman John Swinney said: ''MPs have been inundated with heartbreaking cases of disabled people who have had benefit entitlement removed at the stroke of a pen because of the Tories' Benefits Integrity Project, which Mr Field has enthusiastically pursued.''

Meanwhile, the Government claimed that benefits fraudsters are beginning to feel the impact of a two-pronged strategy designed to catch crooked individuals and big-time, organised conmen. Mr Field pointed to a case in London in which members of one extended family were arrested on suspicion of fraudulently claiming #600,000 in housing benefit.