A banker, a Daily Mail reader and a benefits claimant occupy a table where twelve chocolate hob-nobs sit on a plate in front of them. The banker pockets 11 of the biscuits then says to the Daily Mail reader, “Hey, watch out, that welfare claimant is trying to steal your biscuit.”

UK Housing Minister Grant Shapps set out proposals yesterday to criminalise unlawful subletting and key-selling by social housing tenants through introducing jail sentences of up to two years.

Shapps claim that “the plans could free up thousands of homes for housing waiting lists” in a 11/01/12 news release is quite possibly true. “Some estimates suggest that between 50,000 and 160,000 social homes are currently being unlawfully occupied across the country,” claims the government news release.

However, at this time when banksters are raiding literally trillions of public £GB with government help, and the likes of Vodaphone avoid paying billions in taxes with government assistance, one must balk in disbelief when justification for creating new criminal laws against “tenancy cheats” include sensationalised claims that “they can earn thousands of pounds a year renting their social homes out to private tenants”.

Mr Shapps is consulting on proposals that would introduce specific criminal offences for errant tenants, similar to those that currently exist for social security fraud.

The Minister also wants to shuffle a few civil liberties and “strengthen councils’ legal rights as landlords to help them detect and prosecute tenancy fraud by giving more powers to local authorities to investigate social tenancy fraud through better access to data from banks and utility companies”.

Keep your eye on that biscuit!