Iain Duncan Smith has never hesitated to blame anything on ‘benefit scrounging scum’, so we trust he will forgive Scrapbook for putting his own incompetence in the context of benefits fraud.
With up to £425m of taxpayers’ money in line to be written off as a result of the Universal Credit fiasco – which IDS repeatedly lied about to parliament – 18% of the original £2.3bn budget could flow down the Swannee. In contrast, just 0.7% of the benefits budget is lost to fraud:
Indeed, one of Scrapbook’s most popular posts of all time points out that the average sum paid back by MPs during the expenses scandal was £1,858 whereas fraud averaged out at £59 across 18.5m claimants.
This is one anecdote about wasted taxpayers’ money that IDS’ spads won’t be briefing to the press.
http://politicalscrapbook.net/2013/11/425m-universal-credit-disaster-26-times-proportion-lost-to-fraud/
