A SMOKESCREEN?

By Jason Moore IT hasn´t been a good year for expats. Firstly, incomes have fallen by 20 percent as the pound dived, then one of Britain´s most well known motoring journalists accused us of having “vodka on our cornflakes” and now the BBC says that Expat benefits cheats soak up sun. The latest expat slur (?) is that the government says that benefit fraud by people living abroad costs UK taxpayers 63 million pounds a year. Now I am reliably informed that this figure for Spain could be in the region of 25 million pounds because afterall there are about one million Britons living here and there are always some bad apples. The Conservatives, who are actively campaigning for the British government to do the right thing and pay expats some benefits which they would be entitled to in Britain, say that it is a smoke screen. I don´t think so, I was made aware that the British government were going to launch a campaign against benefit cheats including a confidential hotline earlier this week. The government is right; if people are cheating the system then they should be caught and prosecuted, and I hope the campaign is successful. I am sure that the expat community will be willing to help. In return the government could pay the benefits which are badly and legally needed.