Shannon Matthews' aunt jailed for £35,000 benefit fraud » Communities » 24dash.com

The aunt of abducted schoolgirl Shannon Matthews was jailed for a year today after she admitted benefit fraud amounting to more than £35,000.

Mother-of-two Amanda Hyett admitted claiming a range of benefits while failing to tell the authorities she lived with her husband, bus driver Neil Hyett.

Hyett, 27, of King Edward Street, Thornhill Lees, Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, was a prominent figure following the disappearance of Shannon Matthews last year.

She lived next door to the schoolgirl and is the sister of Shannon's mother Karen's former partner, Craig Meehan.

Hyett stood in the dock looking straight forward as the Recorder of Leeds, Judge Peter Collier QC, passed sentence.

Dressed in a grey and black cardigan over a white blouse, she nodded slightly as Judge Collier told her he was sending her to prison for 12 months and she would have to serve half of this term.

Her husband - who was described by Hyett's own barrister as "completely feckless" - left the court in tears.

Earlier, Craig Hassal, prosecuting, told the court how Hyett had claimed benefits apparently legitimately from November 2002 when she told the Benefits Agency she had split up from her then partner, Neil Hyett.

Mr Hassal said the offending began in May 2004 when she married Mr Hyett, but failed to tell the authorities about this and that they were living together.

In 2006 Hyett stopped claiming benefits and, in an interview at the time, Mr Hyett told staff "they had tried to go legit".

But, Mr Hassal said, he later admitted they could not afford to forgo the benefits and his wife began claiming again three months later.

The prosecutor said the defendant continued to tell officials her husband did not live with her and she did not know what his address was.

Mr Hassal said the fraud lasted for about four years and amounted to £35,885.27.

Garrett Byrne, defending, said: "This is not a case of a professional gang planning a sophisticated fraud, but one of a single mother, for a large part of the time, who was intent on feeding her family rather than feeding some excessive lifestyle."

Mr Byrne said Hyett had a volatile relationship with her husband, who was often away.

He said: "He fully accepts that he can be described as someone that's completely feckless."

The barrister said he went "as far as to father a child with another woman".

He said his client had shown genuine remorse and pleaded with the judge to impose a suspended sentence given she had to look after her two children, aged six and eight.

In a statement the Bank said: "Households have reduced their spending substantially and business investment has fallen especially sharply.

"GDP continued to fall in the third quarter."

It said there had been a number of indicators on spending and confidence that suggested the UK would see economic activity pick up soon.

"On balance, the committee believes that the prospect is for a slow recovery in the level of economic activity, so that a substantial margin of under-utilised resources persists," it added.

Stephen Boyle, head of RBS Group economics, said the was no "plan B" on dealing with the UK's economic woes.

"The extension of the Bank's asset purchase scheme today reminds us that the risks of doing too little considerably outweigh the risks of doing too much," he said.

"The UK economy is still in the high dependency unit, but without QE it might have been in intensive care, or worse."

Mr Byrne said Hyett considered herself to be Shannon Matthew's aunt and the events of the nine-year-old's disappearance last year had a big impact on her.

He said his client was "completely taken in" by Karen Matthews who was later found to have deliberately engineered her own daughter's abduction.

During Shannon's disappearance Hyett and her husband helped with searches for the youngster and were regularly featured in media coverage of the case.

Mr Byrne said she had now lost "this part of her extended family".

Hyett admitted four counts of making a false statement or representation to obtain benefits, one count of retaining a wrongful credit and one count of failure to notify a change of circumstances.

The benefits she claimed included income support, council tax benefit and housing benefit.

Judge Collier told her he could not pass a suspended sentence because of the length of the fraud, the number of benefits involved and Hyett's deliberate false assertions.

But the judge said there were a number of mitigating features.

He said: "The extra money did not go to a lavish lifestyle."

Speaking after the case, Adele Hirst, the regional fraud manager for the Department of Work and Pensions, said: "Anyone who claims to be single when they're not in order to get money they are not entitled to, shouldn't think they can get away with it. As today's sentence shows, we do track down those guilty of benefit theft, we do bring them to court and they do get sent to prison."