Prosecute benefits cheat David Laws!

Submitted by martin on 31 May, 2010 - 10:32 Author: Martin Thomas
Fraud

Prime Minister David Cameron has told Lib Dem minister David Laws, forced to resign on Saturday 30 May because of a £40,000 fraud: "You are a good and honourable man".

When fraud is in the tens of thousands of pounds, and into the pockets of a multi-millionaire, it seems "good" and "honourable" to the Lib Dems and the Tories. To them, a bit of rule-bending at the edges by desperate and wretched benefit claimants is hideous crime, but self-enrichment by the already ultra-wealthy is "good and honourable".

Like the "good" and "honourable" cuts in the incomes of the poor, many of them crafted by Laws himself before he resigned, that the Government will introduce on 22 June to cover the money poured into bankers' pockets?

Like the "good" and "honourable" plans which Laws outlined in the Lib-Dem "Orange Book", a few years back, to scrap the National Health Service altogether, and replace it by a "pay the doctor, then claim the money back" system of "social insurance".

The courts should be cleared of all the cases against hard-pressed benefit claimants - thousands are jailed each year - in order to put Laws on trial.

At present, David Laws, after pocketing £40,000 fraudulently, has walked away with no more damage than resigning his Government post.

Maybe even that is only temporary. David Cameron wrote to Laws: "I hope that, in time, you will be able to serve again".

Disgustingly, Laws pleads for sympathy on the grounds that he was trying to keep his gay relationship secret. What he wants to say to whom about his sex life is irrelevant. Nothing about his sex life compelled him to claim the £40,000, or made it anything but fraudulent for him to claim that money.

Laws' replacement as chief secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, has been exposed as avoiding capital gains tax by naming a flat in London as his "first" home for capital gains tax purposes, while naming the same flat as his "second' home for parliamentary expenses purposes.

Apparently that is not actually illegal - just sharp practice and proof of a shameless desire to squeeze the system for all you can get while trampling on the poor.

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