Shoplifting, tax evasion... If UK politicians break the rules, why shouldn’t the rest of us? | Martha Gill

Corruption at the top has a knock-on effect on ordinary Britons, whose conduct reflects their moral outrage

What to make of last week’s annual report by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which declares – I summarise – that the inhabitants of this island have lost their integrity, and there is nothing anyone can do about it?

The document starts by reporting a rise in benefit fraud. But then it expands – if not entirely in the manner of a drunken uncle, not quite in the manner of a sober departmental report. The DWP’s efforts to deal with false claims, it says, are running into a “headwind” of rising dishonesty in Britain. Our compatriots are afflicted with a “growing propensity to commit fraud” against organisations – tax evasion and shoplifting have likewise exploded – amid a decadent “softening of attitudes” towards this  ind of thing. As a result of all this, the department is having to basically “assume” a 5% rise in benefit fraud every year.

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