THE hotline set up by the Benefits Agency to catch cheats has been a tremendous success.

In six months, information has been received on more than 5,000 suspected Lancashire fraudsters making false benefit claims, including a man in Blackburn who owned a business and whose wife was claiming as a single person.

This country loses millions of pounds a year to people who see our generous benefits system as fair game.

And let us be under no illusions. Those who make false claims are thieving money out of all our pockets. They are no better than Fagin's gang of pickpockets. That is why it is so heartening to see the success of the hotline. As well as weeding out thousands of cheats it is acting as a powerful deterrent to others who may be considering making what they consider to be easy money from false claims.

We all have to pay for the misdemeanours of these miserable cheats. We make up the money lost to false claims in taxes.

This is why no one should have second thoughts about "shopping" benefit cheats.

Those who report fraudsters are responsible citizens, not sneaks.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.