Years of vilification within the pages of the scab press and sadly on our screens via poorly researched and sensationalist seeking TV programmers has led to an almost wholesale demonization of disabled people. This demonization has been so thorough that this government felt it safe to drive through its draconian Welfare Reform. Indeed, they were so supremely confident that they swept aside even the amendments that came from their own tame members of the House of Lords.
Disability benefit fraud is even lower than the overall £1.2 billion annually. Combined IB and DLA fraud amount to £80 million; and the entire take-up of IS is £190 million, of which disability payments are only a small percentage.
Yet, disabled benefits' claimants, according to Michael Howard, are the cause of the country's fiscal deficit.
I'm no mathematician nor arithmetician, yet I'm able to calculate that the billions (anything up to £120) lost in tax fraud annually could eradicate the fiscal deficit fairly quickly; and, that, if:
1. Successive governments had seriously tackled the too easily exploitable gaping tax loopholes;
2. Governments had put into place progressive tax systems;
That our economy might not be in such a parlous state today.
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