Khalid Farooq, Labour Party Official & Prospective Candidate, Is a Benefits Cheat

I suppose he fitted in well in a political party which seems to solely consist of cheats, thieves and liars.

From The Daily Echo:

A Labour election candidate has been forced to resign after The Daily Echo exposed him as a benefits cheat.

Khalid Farooq, 41, was an official in the Southampton Labour Party and a member of its powerful executive committee.

He was hoping to become a councillor for the city’s Bitterne Park ward in local elections this May until his criminal record was revealed to shocked party officials.

Farooq has campaigned with city MP and communities secretary John Denham and joined recent demonstrations against the privatisation of council leisure facilities.

But his political ambitions collapsed when he pleaded guilty to four counts of making false statement to obtain unemployment benefits.

Farooq, of Radcliffe Road, Southampton, failed to declare that he, or his partner, owned no other property when filling out jobseeker allowance forms.

He was ordered to do 80 hours unpaid community work and pay Southampton City Council £150 in costs.

His partner Amna Farooq, 31, of the same address, has been cleared of four similar counts.

On a personal Internet profile Farooq describes himself as a “student ambassador” employed by Southampton Solent University and claims: “I am a simple and honest person”.

He also moderates a legal website “Solent Moot Society”, which claims to be based at the university. A university spokesman said he was a former student who may have worked for them previously on an hourly basis.

Farooq dismissed his conviction as “nothing serious” and put it down to a “mis-statement”, but declined to comment further.

Southampton Labour Party president John Arnold said: “As soon as we found out about his conviction we contacted Khalid Farooq and he resigned as a candidate and as a Labour Party member.”

Farooq also now faces dismissal from the city’s Pakistan Welfare Association.

Aren't entire areas of public spending in parts of this country the "Pakistan Welfare Association" thanks to the immigration policies of sucessive governments?

What a sorry state this country is in.