§ We want to combine a strong, affordable welfare system with a successful low-tax economy. That means that when we spend money on social security, it must go only to those who need it. It also means that when we levy taxes, we must make sure that they are paid and not evaded by those who ought to pay them.
As part of our continuing fight against tax and benefit fraud and tax loopholes, I am introducing a package of measures called "spend to save". That involves the 163 planned spending of money, carefully targeted to save much more money for the general public, and to raise revenue. There will be more money next year to clamp down on benefit fraud. There will be more visits and checks on benefit claimants in high-risk groups, and the information that we already have on benefit claimants will be used more effectively to catch cheats.
Inland Revenue tax experts will be redeployed to investigate even more rigorously how some big, sophisticated companies seem to pay so little tax. They will make sure that companies are paying what they owe, and what we intended they should owe. In short, we intend to do more about companies being "economical with their tax".
There will be more resources in the Revenue and Customs to stem the growth of the shadow economy. Tax cheats put law-abiding small entrepreneurs out of business, and we all lose from that. There will be more Customs and Excise officers to tackle value added tax and other tax abuse, including yet more to target the smuggling of alcohol and tobacco.
The "spend to save" package will cost £800 million over the next three years to secure, in a well-planned and measured way, revenue and expenditure savings of well over eight times that amount—£6.7 billion. These measures are additional to the effective steps that we have taken previously.