Keir Starmer is facing intense backlash online for vowing to crack down on benefit fraud rather than tax evasion.
In his keynote speech to this year’s Labour conference, the prime minister is expected to announce a new fraud, error and debt bill to modernise the Department for Work and Pensions.
That includes targeting welfare fraud, although Labour has emphasised that the bill would still protect the most vulnerable claimants.
Starmer will promise to “leave no stone unturned” in his effort to rebuild the country’s public sector and save £1.6bn over the next five years.
The new government has already faced backlash for restricting winter fuel payments to those on pension credit and refused to scrap the two-child benefit cap.
On Sky News on Tuesday, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden explained the new plan, saying: “It’s really important that if money is spent on benefits, it goes to those who are genuinely in need of it, and where there’s fraud in the system that we try to root that out.”
According to the government’s own data, the net loss from fraud and error in the benefit system was £8.6m for the financial year ending in 2024 – that’s 3.2% of the system’s total expenditure.
Meanwhile, the total “tax gap” – the amount between what HMRC expects to collect and what it actually gets – was estimated to be around £39.8bn between 2022 and 2023. That works out to 4.8% of total theoretical tax liabilities.
The government has promised to crack down on tax avoidance too, by hiring 5,000 more compliance officers at HMRC, but critics are still furious about the focus on the welfare state.
Accounts on X wasted no time in comparing Labour’s plan to the Conservatives, who intermittently took aim at “welfare scroungers” after getting into power in 2010 and imposing various cuts and freezes.
Social media users could not help noting that Starmer’s new crackdown sounded “horribly familiar” – and sarcastically recalled how Labour has pledged to be the party of “change” after 14 years of Tory rule...