Thousands of students are claiming they no longer live at home in order to get extra allowances for living expenses, Labour MPs claim in Wednesday’s Telegraaf.

In total, some €80m in grants is being claimed by students who have registered themselves as living with grandparents or other relations but still live at home, the paper says.
‘This is widescale fraud and it is spreading,’ Labour MP Hans Spekman told the paper. ‘And no-one who is caught has to pay the money back. So it has become normal to commit fraud.’
In total, 250,000 students claim an extra allowance of €1,920 a year for living away from home. But Labour MPs estimate some 40,000 still live with their parents.
A spokesman for the IB group, which deals with student grants, confirmed that no action is taken if fraud comes to light. ‘We do not have the capacity to do so,’ he told the Telegraaf.