LAST month a free government benefits advice line closed.

This month the Government is spending £500,000 on an advertising campaign to publicise a confidential telephone line, already being dubbed the "Snooper's Charter", for people to give information about alleged benefit cheats.

Labour's social security spokesman Henry McLeish seems to have hit the nail on the head by saying it appears that one hotline is being removed to pay for another. It certainly seems that fraud detection is taking priority over entitlement to benefits. Instead of trying to turn us into a nation of sneaks, the Government should spend their time, and money, working out better ways for benefits to be administered, so that fraud is eliminated.

They may decide, too, that the amounts paid to some claimants are not always enough for them to live on and that is why some of them, in desperation, get jobs on the side.

We do not condone anyone cheating on the system. But inviting people to snoop on their neighbours and then to denounce them anonymously seems a repugnant way to stop them.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.