Tough talking

His "uncompromising" crackdown on benefit cheats will be welcomed by everyone, apart from those who continue to defraud the taxpayer. The Prime Minister's promise to use the expertise of credit agencies also signals a new approach.

Yet this is where the problems will begin for Mr Cameron. Such agencies do not have unblemished records when it comes to accuracy – as many people have discovered to their cost.

Their information is only likely to be beneficial in the more minor cases rather than in those instances where the fraud is more elaborate and involves far greater sums of public money.

Even if the Government – by some bureaucratic miracle – successfully recoups the 5.2bn lost each year through fraud, it will still leave a welfare bill of 192bn a year, according to the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Yet, while the majority of these benefit payments are entirely

justified, it does comprise 12.5bn, the cost of the three-fold increase in the number of people claiming the Disability Living Allowance. As the IEA says, this increase does not reflect the true reality of Britain's population today.

That is why the Government cannot look at one aspect of welfare reform in isolation; it has to consider every section of policy and, more importantly, create sufficient private sector jobs for those who are able to work.