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Reform Runcorn MP defends helping woman dubbed 'Britain's biggest benefits cheat'

Sarah Pochin shared a video of fraudster Ethel McGill praising the work of Reform UK before later deleting in

[Reform's Sarah Pochin, MP for Runcorn and Helsby]

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Reform's Sarah Pochin, MP for Runcorn and Helsby(Image: Getty Images)

The Reform MP for Runcorn said she has to take people at face value after she boasted of helping a woman who was previously jailed for large-scale benefit fraud.

Yesterday (Wednesday, May 27) Sarah Pochin, the MP for Runcorn and Helsby, posted a video of Ethel McGill. In the clip, McGill, 76, said that within two days of speaking to Reform UK, she was "getting the help I needed" to move into an adapted two-bedroom bungalow. Ms Pochin captioned the post: Helping people like Ethel is why I love my job."

However, the clip has now been deleted after LBC pointed out that McGill is an amateur actress who was involved in a 740,000 benefit scam. In the video, McGill is speaking to Ms Pochin directly.

McGill says she came to the MP's office as she believed a party, led by Nigel Farage, could help with her and her son's housing situation. She said her son was "sleeping in the woods" at the time and added: "I was begging for help and I didn't get a bit of help.

"One day I saw this office and I thought, wait a minute, there's Nigel Farage, I think that man can help because he's for the people, he's for the people like me.

"I've come into this office and within five minutes, I was getting the help I needed. Within two days, I got the offer of a two bedroom apartment that was fully adapted. And they helped my son get his flat, his first flat. Now, they've helped me with his mental health.

"Sarah, you should be in government, you should be in government now because everybody needs your help and we're not getting it anywhere. If it wasn't for this office, I would still be in that bungalow and possibly my son could be dead."

[Screen grab from the now deleted video posted by Reform MP for Runcorn Sarah Pochin, of convicted fraudster Ethel McGill ]

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Screen grab from the now deleted video posted by Reform MP for Runcorn Sarah Pochin, of convicted fraudster Ethel McGill

Ms Pochin can be overheard repeatedly saying thank you to McGill as she makes these comments.

In a statement today the MP said she has to take people at "face value", and that her office "does not run background checks on constituents who come to us asking for support."

As previously reported by the ECHO, McGill, who lived in Runcorn at the time, was jailed at Liverpool Crown Court in 2019 following one of the country's biggest ever benefit cheat cases.

McGill pleaded guilty to 14 counts of bogus benefits claims and money laundering in connection with around three quarters of a million pounds she fiddled from the public purse in her decades-long series of scams.

The case was described at the time by the Crown Prosecution Service as one of the biggest of its type in the UKs history. Her actions led the Daily Mirror to dub McGill as Britains biggest benefits cheat.

Robert Dudley, prosecuting, previously told Chester Crown Court how her duplicity began in the 1990s as she registered at two separate doctors surgeries under different names, presenting at one without any serious health issues and at the other with a myriad of ailments.

[Ethel McGill burying her face against a pile of incontinence pads while arriving at Liverpool Crown court for sentencing in 2019]

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Ethel McGill burying her face against a pile of incontinence pads while arriving at Liverpool Crown court for sentencing in 2019(Image: Julian Hamilton/Daily Mirror)

When McGills dad died in 2004, she continued to claim his war pension for another 12 years, even persuading someone to lie in his bed to hoodwink assessors from the Independent Living Fund in 2012.

The scam reaped a staggering 590,000 for McGill. Two years later in 2014, she told Liverpool Housing Trust that her dad was in Scotland with his carer.

McGill even fabricated the existence of a carer to make bogus care package claims to Halton Borough Council. Suspicions continued to mount and the Department For Work And Pensions (DWP) launched a covert surveillance probe in 2016.

Despite McGills claims of having "severe care needs" due to debilitating illnesses including dementia, she was seen shopping, carrying items such as wooden shelving and armfuls of boxes around, as well as lifting, bending, and moving around without help.

When arrested, she appeared "very confused and unable to speak", and when not lying down in an awkward posture, she walked with one foot turned inwards.

When DWP investigators searched her home, they found home videos of McGill walking unaided, as well as a bizarre acting agency profile promoting herself as "actor, film and stage crew" who can play roles from "a very hard-hearted Glasgow woman to being a very timid domestic abuse victim".

[McGill, who told an appeal tribunal in 1993 that she was confined to a wheelchair, was filmed in 2016 unloading a car boot]

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McGill, who told an appeal tribunal in 1993 that she was confined to a wheelchair, was filmed in 2016 unloading a car boot(Image: DWP)

Judge Steven Everett branded her "pathetic" for having switched from speaking normally during an interview with a probation officer to pretending to be incoherent when her son entered the room.

The judge sentenced McGill who tried to hide from view as she arrived at Liverpool Crown Court by burying her face against a pile of incontinence pads to five years and 10 months in prison.

He said: For year after year, you in a sense sadly sullied your fathers name by making these dishonest, despicably dishonest claims and they were for a substantial amount of money.

In a statement posted on X this morning, Ms Pochin said the issues her office helped McGill with were not linked to her crime. She said: Ive been made aware that a constituent who asked for my help has previously served time for benefit fraud.

As an MP, I have to take people at face value. My office does not run background checks on constituents who come to us asking for support.

The issues my office assisted with were entirely unrelated to that offence. Reform UK stands firmly against benefit fraud and abuse of the system.

But a responsible MP must deal with each case on its merits and support constituents who ask for help.

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