Labour wants paid informers

VAT fraud has been out of control for a while[1], and the government is loosing billions because of it.

Instead of getting rid of this overcomplicated fraud magnet of a tax, because they can't it being an EU requirement, varrious means have been thought up to try and reduce the amount of fraud. The latest idea is to pay informers to spy on their neighbours. Of course this is not the first time Labour have floated the idea of creating an army of informers to spy on their fellow citizens but before it was under state compultion rather than this more mercinary approach.

The informer gets a percentage of the assets seized. Asset recovery was supposed to be a money spinner for the state but due to the governments incompitence even when it comes to this simplist form of legalised robbery it to costs more to run the operation than it actually steals. This new power is unlikely to be anybetter used than the old one so it will effectively mean that the creation of a tax payer funded network of informers the length and breadth of country under the control of the Home Secretary's private police force.

This is not to say that these people will not find people to accuse of fraud. This is going to be a boon for the police in their need to make up crimes to detect in order to meet government targets. People respond to incentives after all, just as people always have. Let us not forget that the scale of the witch mania of the middle ages was not just because of pyscopaths driven by religious ferver, they where psycopaths driven by religious ferver and a lust for stealing other peoples property. Accusing somebody of being a Witch allowed them to do just that by:

the confiscation of the victim's property. Usually the confiscated property was divided three ways: by the Inquisition members, the church officials, and the state treasury. ... Even the dead were not safe. If a suspicion aroused that a dead person may have been a heretic the body could be dug up and burned. His property was then confiscated.

Labour being modern and forward thinking have simply dropped the church's cut.