This sickening £630,000 benefits swindle and tax-dodging shows urgent need for reform
OPINION - LEO MCKINSTRY: How many more stories of the taxpayer being swindled must we read?
The urgent need for welfare reform was again illustrated this week by the sickening case of Steve and Kim Benstock, who swindled £630,000 by fraudulently claiming benefits and dodging taxes. Steve is now serving five years in jail, but Kim was only handed a suspended sentence. Together, this grasping pair showed how vulnerable the creaking system is to abuse. Yet there is little hope of real change from the present Government, given Labour’s sentimental attachment to benefits.
For many MPs , social security payments are a symbol of socialist concern, the larger the better, while the swelling army of claimants could be described as the party’s core vote. Sir Keir Starmer fled the battlefield at the first sign of backbench resistance to restrictions on claims. He has been in a headlong retreat ever since. Even when he goes, there is no sign that his successor will be any tougher.
Angela Rayner sees herself as the keeper of the sacred flame of socialism, Wes Streeting prefers bold talk to meaningful action, and Andy Burnham is just a windsock – swinging in the direction of the prevailing breeze. And that means more handouts. The whole racket is morally indefensible and financially unsustainable.
As we learnt this week from the latest tranche of Peter Mandelson, the current Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden is increasingly exasperated with his colleagues. “Every meeting I have is: ‘who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others.”
One century since legend opened the door on a trail of wreckage
Yesterday saw the revered Lord’s cricket ground host its 150th Test, a great milestone for one of the world’s best known stadiums. It is also exactly a century since the legendary fast bowler Harold Larwood made his Test debut at Lord’s, playing against Australia in 1926.
For the next seven years, he captivated crowds and terrified batsmen with his lightning speed delivered with a classical flowing action. At the White City ground, he was timed with primitive camera technology at over 100mph, a record never attained by any other quick bowler.
What made his pace all the more remarkable was his short stature and slight frame, but before he became a professional cricketer he had been a miner in the Nottinghamshire coalfield, a job which had given him tremendous upper body strength.
A modest, self- effacing man and the son of a Methodist teetotaller, he left a trail of wreckage across the cricket world with his unplayable deliveries, most notoriously during the Bodyline tour of 1932/33 when, on his captain’s instructions, he deliberately bowled short at the batsmen. Amid the explosive controversy, he refused to apologise.
The price he paid for his integrity was the end of his England career. Ironically he emigrated to Australia after the war and lived there happily with his family until his death in 1995.
Truly sickening statistic
New figures just out show that the NHS is losing the equivalent 80,000 staff to sickness absence every year at a cost of £4.6billion. The ghost army of absentees would be enough to run 80 hospitals. I thought the health service was meant to make us better.
