YET another of those spot-check swoops on East Lancashire taxis - this time in Burnley - nets the by-now-familiar haul of clapped-out cabs, but also a disturbing something else.

For out of 18 taxis hailed at random by police, the driver of every single one was found to be drawing the dole.

This is cheating on a grand scale - serious welfare fraud.

And as a deterrent, the full force of the law should be felt by those who are convicted.

Let us have none of the soft-option response of these swindlers, who were caught red-handed, simply being invited to withdraw their claims for unemployment benefit.

They should have the book thrown at them.

But more than this, the revelation of such widespread and costly deception in the cowboy-plagued taxi business suggests that it should now be a target not just for spot-checks, but for an out-and-out purge.

That should be on all fronts - ranging from vehicle safety and the drivers' backgrounds to vehicle taxation and insurance and, above all, social security claims.

For ordinary people are being squeezed by an ever-increasing benefits bill that must have the scrounging and cheating eradicated from it.

This new government is pledged to undertake a radical review of the welfare system.

It would do well, when such strong evidence of a fraud-riddled niche of the black economy is exposed in the way the "anything goes" cab trade has been, to come down hard and swiftly - right across the country.

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