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And the result is that entire communities have been let down.”. The Government’s anti-fraud ad campaign was conceived as a hard-hitting portrayal of benefit cheats as calculating thieves who will always be found out. But the £5m-a-year TV campaign to demonise scroungers appears to have backfired. A survey of viewers found that it made fraud seem “easier to commit”. The other focuses on a glamorous, designer label-wearing hairdresser whose excuse for arriving late to work is that she has been “signing-on”.Describing the effect on the public’s attitude, the report, by RSGB, an independent research group, says: “One negative impact that may be the result of the campaign was that respondents perceived benefit fraud as easier to commit.”While the six-month campaign led to some “small positive shifts” in people’s attitude towards fraud, it had failed to make “much difference” to whether they were prepared to report offenders through the national benefit fraud hotline.The Department for Work and Pensions said the ads, produced by the D’Arcy agency, will continue. But the findings have prompted some opposition MPs to call for the immediate scrapping of the TV campaign, which is to return with a new burst of ads in the new year.David Willetts, the shadow work and pensions minister, said: “Most government advertising campaigns sink without trace, but this one seems to have had an impact: unfortunately, the impact seems to be that it’s made people think fraud is easier to commit.”If it carried on like this, then “taking into account the cost of all the extra fraud, it will be the most expensive campaign they’ve ever had”..

The disgraced Leeds defender Jonathan Woodgate and his teammate Lee Bowyer “invited trouble” and damaged the reputation of their club, according to Leeds United’s manager, David O’Leary. He was cleared of causing grievous bodily harm to Asian student Sarfraz Najeib.”Perhaps he ought not to be paid until he has completed that 100 hours and ought not to play either,” said Mr Wyatt, a member of the Commons select committee on culture, media and sport.Bowyer was cleared of all charges. However, the Najeib family is furious that only one person, Paul Clifford, was convicted of the “savage and racist attack”. They are now considering suing Woodgate for damages.Speaking on tonight’s BBC Panorama programme, Najeib will say that he believes the attack was racially motivated: “I believe if I was a white guy they wouldn’t have beat me up that severely.”. Ministers are to close the loophole that allows paedophiles such as Sarah Payne’s killer, Roy Whiting, to reoffend. It was seen as a one-off.A Home Office spokesperson said: “Protecting children is of the highest priority to the Government.

We must do everything we can to ensure that the public is protected from offenders where a risk can be foreseen.”We have already acted to build on and improve the arrangements for protecting the public from dangerous offenders and we will study the details of this case to ensure we learn from it ways of improving the arrangements still further.”Among the package of proposals being looked at by the Government are “indeterminate” sentences. “Putting a six-month time scale on the definition of paedophilia doesn’t seem logical. I want to see the law shift the balance of risk in the other direction to give greater safety to children.”Two leading academics, Dr Ethel Quayle and Professor Max Taylor, experts on the behaviour of sex offenders, also back changes in definitions and risk assessment.Writing in today’s Independent on Sunday they say: “Whiting was classified as ‘high risk’ and not ‘paedophile’ because his assessors did not consider his primary sexual interest to be children. We need to look again at how these classifications are made.”. A huge increase in Railtrack profits is to be declared by the troubled railways group, provoking anger among passengers and shareholders and prompting fresh questions about how the whole fiasco has been handled. In the same period of the previous year, the group declared profits of £175m.To the astonishment of many rail travellers who have suffered delays and cancellations as a result of the deterioration in Britain’s rail network, the accounts will reveal that Railtrack group – which included Railtrack plc, now in administration – was generating considerably more money than it was spending.Today’s disclosure will provoke angry questions from passengers who will want to know why Railtrack was making soaring profits while its subsidiary was begging the Government for billions for investment in the collapsing rail infrastructure.Stewart Francis, chair of the Rail Passengers’ Council, said last night that passengers will be “aghast” at the news. “The company has been paying huge dividends to shareholders while the railway has crumbled.

The directors of Railtrack have been scrambling around fighting the Government on behalf of the shareholders’ interests. The passengers have had enough.”Their anger will increase if the profits figures lead to higher bonuses for directors of the company, including two sacked last week. They claim it went to the wall because a £162m grant was withheld. that Government improperly destroyed the value of our assets.”The former trade secretary John Redwood called for the Commons select committee inquiry into Mr Byers’s handling of Railtrack to be reopened. “The profits will now have to go to the shareholders of Railtrack Group, instead of being available to the needs of the railway,” he said.Mr Byers remains adamant that higher profits for the holding company make no difference to his judgement that Railtrack plc was insolvent. The Government said that Railtrack plc would have been £700m in the red by this week if it had not been put into administration.