The phantom benefit cheat is the perfect patsy for austerity | Frances Ryan

It's in the government's interests to keep promoting the very myths that keep the benefit fraud hotline ringing - and distract us from real social problems

I can't decide what is most disturbing: that more than 85% of allegations of benefit fraud put forward by the public over the past five years have been false, or that this is about almost 900,000 out of more than a million cases.

That isn't a handful of mistaken or malicious individuals. It's a widespread anti-benefit mindset that - over five years of austerity - has rooted itself in British culture: through Benefits Street type-television, the rhetoric of politicians, and the pages of national newspapers.

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