The government has run a trial project identifying benefit fraud where claimants leaving the UK for more than eight weeks have their benefits stopped. Claimants are expected to stop claiming in these circumstances but many don't.
The government set fifteen investigators who reclaimed £17M. They are increasing the number of investigators to 200 and hope to recover £350m.
'If that works we'll increase the investigator numbers to three million and we should be able to close the £80B black hole overnight,' said a government spokesman. When asked if some of the investigators could be used to look into large scale tax evasion by billionaires his microphone mysteriously cut off and he developed a serious cough so we'll have to get back to that question in a decade or three.
