Peter.
Interesting reply and a reasonable hypothesis.
No spin from me on these figures, as I took them from this gov.uk own website but of course that does not mean a spin has been put on them.
The point I am trying to make, is that it makes no sense to me, to spend £20billion on trying to eradicate fraud of £1.2Billion.
In my opinion the money would be better spent on solving the problem of why errors of £0.7Billion, is costing the tax payer for errors made by the DWP's own departments.
I am not defending anyone who commits fraud and I will support any reasonable measures taken to catch those who commit these criminal acts but I do not believe that these current cuts are about catching those that are guilty of benefit fraud or that these cuts that this government or the previous Labour government, has and is implementing, is to reduce the deficit.
In my opinion these cuts will never be cost effective or catch enough fraudster to warrant spending this much money.