Ministers have been urged to publish more accurate figures on benefit fraud to stop fuelling the impression that many claimants are “scroungers.”{jcomments on}
In a report published today, an all-party committee of MPs said the Government should issue separate statistics about fraud and error on different days so that the media could not imply that mistakes made in paying benefits were fraudulent claims.
Pressure groups have accused ministers of portraying people living on social security as “skivers” and contrasting them with “hard-working” families who get up early to go to work.
The Work and Pensions Select Committee said the estimated rate of fraud is 0.7 per cent of total spending on benefits, but the public’s “misperception” is that it is about 34 times higher than that.
Read the story in The Independent
