Judge attacks benefits fraud prosecutors

Dennis Douglas, 49, claimed arthritis meant it took him ten minutes to walk 40 yards, and was paid disability living allowance for almost a decade.

But his supposed impairment did not stop him taking annual holidays to the U.S. and clambering into and out of the cab of his lorry as he worked as a delivery driver.

He was finally exposed after surveillance footage showed him reversing the articulated lorry into yards, depots and factories, emptying loads and even cleaning the 44-tonne vehicle. Yesterday a judge bemoaned the fact that he couldn’t jail him – and instead gave him a stern lecture on how he had robbed the public purse.

‘While you were jetting off on your transatlantic holidays, the taxpayers were working their socks off to fill the hole in public accounts that you caused,’ Judge Brian Lewis told him.

‘It’s a thorough disgrace and you ought to feel ashamed of yourself.’

He added: ‘For a period of nine years, you dishonestly and quite deliberately cheated the public out of a sum of just over £20,000. That’s a substantial sum of money removed from a general welfare pot, which is put there by the taxpayer to underwrite certain expenses that the public expect.

‘£20,000 is the equivalent of a year’s salary for a newly qualified teacher or a nurse.’

Douglas was assessed as eligible for benefits in 1992, but yesterday admitted failing to report a change in circumstances when his health improved.

Judge Lewis complained that prosecutors had not charged him with the more serious offence of dishonestly claiming benefits, which could have seen him jailed for up to six months:

It’s just a shame they have chosen to prosecute in the way they have because this deserves a sentence of imprisonment.

Instead the father of two was sentenced to 56 days in prison suspended for two years and ordered to complete 180 hours of unpaid work. He has pledged to pay back the entire sum.

So that's all right then.

Douglas had been taken to hospital in February 1991 because of arthritis-related pain, and his weight ballooned to 20 stone, Liverpool Crown Court heard.

He was assessed as eligible for support the following year.

Kevin Slack, prosecuting, said: ‘He said it took him five to ten minutes to walk 40 yards and that he needed assistance. He said he had great difficulty walking down stairs.

‘But there must have been a marked improvement by 2001 by the fact that he got full time work as an HGV driver.’

Douglas, of Hunts Cross, Liverpool, failed to inform benefits staff and continued claiming the maximum rate of Disability Living Allowance for nine years, during which time he also worked as a salesman and went on annual holidays to America. In total, Douglas wrongly claimed £20,246.

The court heard that under the previous assessment system, Douglas had only been subjected to one medical examination, whereas now check-ups are yearly.

The Department of Work and Pensions welcomed the sentence (they think this is a suitable sentence for nine years of crime?) and said its prosecutions of benefits cheats had a 92 per cent success rate.

That's hardly the point. This guy dishonestly claimed disability allowance for nice years and then got prosecuted for a lesser offence. He must be laughing at the flat-footed DWP, and rightly so.