Rumbled benefits cheats offer sensational excuses

Government ministers have revealed a top ten list of improbable and entertaining excuses offered by rumbled benefits cheats, including the defence of one perp who insisted: "It wasn't me working, it was my identical twin."

Another brilliantly claimed: "I wasn't aware my wife was working because her hours of work coincided with the times I spent in the garden shed."

The most improbable example provided by fraud inspectors was from the chap who allegedly said: "I had no idea my wife was working! I never noticed her leaving the house twice a day in a fluorescent jacket and a Stop Children sign."

The other unlikely tales on offer to highlight the £1.6bn annual hit to the taxpayers' wallet by benefits and tax credit fraudsters are:

• "We don't live together he just comes each morning to fill up his flask".
• "I wasn't using the ladders to clean windows, I carried them for therapy for my bad back."
• "My wallet was stolen so someone must have been using my identity, I haven't been working".
• "I didn't know I was still on benefit."
• "I didn't declare my savings because I didn't save them, they were given to me."
• "He lives in a caravan in the drive, we're not together."
• "He does come here every night and leave in the morning and although he has no other address I don't regard him as living here."

Lord Freud, Welfare Reform Minister, said: "Benefit fraud is no joke, and yet our investigators are routinely dealing with barefaced cheek and ridiculous excuses for stealing money from the taxpayer." ®