Beating fraud is everyone's business - Department of Social Security [DSS]

THE Government will continue its attempts to reduce benefit fraud after the Budget by screening a trio of television advertisements seeking to ostracise people who are working while claiming.

 The campaign will try to change the prevailing culture by depicting benefit cheats as "social menaces" whose behaviour should not be tolerated. It follows the success of the confidential anti-fraud hotlines that have taken 150,000 calls in the past 12 months as people identify neighbours and colleagues they believe are fiddling the system.

 Alistair Darling, the Social Security Secretary, said fraud deprived the taxpayer of £2 billion a year. He said his target was to make "working and claiming" culturally unacceptable. The first advertisement will show a man being paid cash by a building site boss before joining his mates in the pub, where they take pity on him because he is on the dole and stand him a round.

 The punchline is being kept secret for the time being, although it is expected to reinforce the message that fraud does not pay.