TAKE CHEATS OUT OF THE GAME
Page 7
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peter Lilley's plan to ban dole cheats from driving sounds perfectly reasonable to us. Every year social security fraud costs taxpayers an estimated £313n—last year the Benefits Agency prosecuted some 10,000 people for fiddling. But what's that got to do with road hauliers? Nothing, except that a significant number of dole cheats are driving trucks while claiming benefit. During the recent roadside check carried out by DSS officials as part. of Lancashire Constabulary's Operation Canberra, 26 drivers were immediately taken off benefit. Ministers believe that a driving ban would be a fair punishment for fraudsters; for vocational licence holders it certainly would be one that hurt and it might also go some way to balancing all the time and effort it takes the Benefits Agency to catch them, Of course, the real reason why dole cheats drive trucks is because some operators give them the keys; usually knowing full well what's going on. The problem won't go away, until those operators lose their 0-licences on the grounds of poor repute, Magistrates Association chair Rosemary Thomas is quoted as saying that removing the right to drive is a "very heavy punishment". She should be a road haulier and have the pleasure of paying the dole cheats' benefits—and then competing against them out on the road. Heavy wouldn't come into it.
Finally, a footnote on the news that British hauliers are spending more than 21bn a year on "foreign" vehicles (see page 14): when Volvos are built in Scotland, Scanias in Holland, lvecos in Spain and British truck makers use American-designed engines and axles with Italian and Austrian cabs and German gearboxes, isn't it time to stop asking where a truck comes from? If the man in the moon built one that did over lOmpg and only needed servicing every leap year we'd all buy one from him—and quite happily agree with Samuel Johnson that: 'patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel".