OXFORD City Council has defended its ability to catch benefit cheats as the Government annou-nced a crackdown on the fraudulent claims costing taxpayers £1.5bn a year.

As reported in yesterday’s Oxford Mail, Regina Hutchinson, 47, of Abingdon Road, Oxford, illegally claimed about £34,000 in council benefits between 1998 and 2008, but was not detected until 2009.

She also conned the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) out of about £26,000, and was given a suspended prison sentence.

The city council said it had 300 cases under investigation and had prosecuted, fined or formally cautioned 84 claim-ants and recovered £270,000 in the past year.

Carol Quainton, who leads six full-time and one part-time investigators, said: “A large percentage of the work carried out by the council’s investigation team is a result of data matching.

“This is done on a monthly basis with the DWP and on a bi-annual basis, UK wide, with the Audit Commission.

“It can highlight discrepancies such as another person in the household, undeclared work, undeclared interest-bearing bank accounts, a different address, undeclared tax credits and other undeclared benefits.

“With changes in legislation over the past 10 years the investigation officers have the ability to obtain information on an individual without their consent.

“Information can be obtained from a wide variety of places including banks, building societies, telecommunication companies and employers.

“These enquires are not made as a matter of course and they must be reasonable, proportionate and necessary.”

She explained it took time to gather evidence behind the scenes and the first time the claimant would know they are under investigation is when the letter drops on their doormat asking them to attend an interview.

Ms Quainton added: “Last year the investigation team dealt with over 1,200 referrals. Some were dealt with in a day, others took weeks or months and some are still open and under investigation.

“The cases that were looked at and closed last year by the team realised £750,000 of overpaid benefits. Most were not regarded as a serious fraud as the discrepancies were over a short period and were for relatively small amounts.

“The council will recover the overpayments and in cases where the overpayments are not paid will pursue the customer through to civil court.”

Yesterday, Prime Minister David Cameron at a question and answer session in Manchester said: “There are some people who are claiming welfare who are not entitled to it and that is just wrong and that should stop.

“The system pays money inappropriately to people who are not entitled to it so we have got to make the system work better as well.”

Mr Cameron said a simplifed benefits system being developed by the DWP would cut the problems with administrative errors.

l Yesterday, Simon Froude, 47, of Awgar Stone Road, Headington, was sentenced by Oxford magistrates to a two-month suspended prison term, 100 hours’ unpaid work and told to pay £50 costs and pay back overpayments after earlier admitting fraudulently claiming benefits.