Edinburgh scratches the surface of benefit fraud

New tactics to detect the sincerity of benefit claimants have resulted in a huge rise in the number of cheats prosecuted, says The Edinburgh News.

The number of people reported last year for making a range of fraudulent claims rose to 49 – a jump of more than 100 per cent from 2007/08.

Council officials "hailed the improvement", we're told.

Let's put that in context. Edinburgh don't know how many people they paid claims to in total. But as an example (outside the 2007/08 year) they say that "on 02/02/09 we were paying benefits on 44,749 claims" - a figure which is the combined total of claims for Housing Benefit, and claims for Council Tax Benefit.

Let's assume everyone was claiming for both, so that the number of claimants was half that number. Prosecutions were still only 0.2% of claimants, which is very small.

Does it matter? Look at the size of the operation. In 2007/08:

Rent Rebate (Public Sector Housing Benefit) was £66,927,624
Rent Allowance (Private Sector Housing Benefit) was £78,094,549
Total Housing benefit therefore was £145,022,173
Council Tax Benefit was £34,411,795
Total Benefits paid were therefore a massive £179,433,968.

So Edinburgh does need to do much better!