Threats have been made to Lambeth officials, and Ms Rabbatts is expecting more as her war continues.Mr Field asked her if the work was going to become “more dangerous?” She replied that while people “are getting the message” and her force becomes more effective, they “will decide to move elsewhere – or we might be subject to more intensive pressure”.At present, said Mrs Rabbatts, police and council officers operated at a local or regional level. A fortnight ago, Ms Rabbatts told the Commons Social Security Select Committee, that the problem was much worse than previously supposed.She agreed with Frank Field, the committee chairman, who concluded: “Gangs saw this as an easy area to take public money, and they [had] moved in and set themselves up as landlords and these groups are involved in other frauds as well.”Ms Rabbatts stressed that greater co-operation between police and councils was urgently needed to combat such systematic abuse.Apprehending small-time false claimants, she said, was no longer such a difficulty. Frequently, they have been able to trace the journey of a single cheque from council coffers to bank accounts filled with the proceeds of thousands of similar cheques.Shortly before police raided the offices of one landlord – thought to be a “front” for one gang – the building mysteriously burned down, destroying all the files.In the past, housing benefit fraud was thought to be confined to individuals making false claims at a petty level. However, for the first time, a senior local government figure has conceded the involvement of organised crime.In an interview with the Independent, Heather Rabbatts, Lambeth’s chief executive, said she shared the view of the Metropolitan Police that the groups were controlled by “a very few people” and were operating across the capital. The same people, she said, were thought to be responsible for a range of crimes, involving other types of benefit claims. Senior Metropolitan Police detectives and council leaders believe that the fraud is being conducted on a London-wide basis by gangs milking the benefits system on a number of fronts.
The Independent has learnt that in just one borough alone – Lambeth in south London – up to pounds 30m of taxpayers’ money may have been stolen, out of a total budget of pounds 125m.Police have been working with closely Lambeth to get behind the false names and addresses that litter the housing benefit register. But, as the receptionist at Leith’s Restaurant confided, if anyone can do it, it will be Prue..

Millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money has been stolen from local authorities in massive and systematic housing benefit frauds controlled by organised crime gangsters. But we want to break the duck and get something up there to get people to think about it.”Were I a betting man I would wager – given the queues of the great and good who will want to have their say – that the 20ft x 9ft plinth will still stand empty in five years’ time. Ideas still in play include the painter Turner, authors Dickens and Thackeray, and William Morris, Florence Nightingale, Emmeline Pankhurst, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, and the cook Mrs Beeton.”We’re now looking at the idea of having an exhibition with the sculpture changed every year for five years,” says Prue Leith. “We could try out a couple of existing sculptures – there’s a marvellous one somewhere else of Gordon of Khartoum on a camel, which is the right shape for the plinth – and then we could commission three new ones What we put up might not be the final thing. Others which have been dismissed by the RSA’s statue committee include the Pigeon Lady from Mary Poppins, Winnie the Pooh, a giant pigeon and John Major preaching Back to Basics from a soap box.

The other two statues were of General Sir Henry Havelock, who suppressed the Indian mutiny in 1857, and General Sir Charles Napier, who suppressed the rulers of Sind in 1843 (announcing the fact in a telegram home with the one word peccavi – Latin for “I have sinned”). But no one could agree who the third military hero should be.They still can’t. Less military subjects have been suggested: the Queen Trooping the Colour meets a Buckingham Palace objection that no statue can be erected during her lifetime. Suggestions have been made of Margaret Thatcher atop a tank, of General Gordon of Khartoum, of Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay who led the Normandy invasion in 1944. George IV got one because he was the recently deceased king (and he had left 9,000 guineas to pay for himself).

His successor, William IV, known to his subjects as Silly Billy, fancied himself on another but then died without leaving the cash “and as he wasn’t particularly popular,” says Prue Leith, “no one wanted to stump up the money to carry the idea through.”So thoughts turned to another military man. Many of the people I have met are so remarkable at economic strategies that they could easily run one of my companies.”If their sense of diplomacy is as well developed perhaps they could also give her some tips on how to resolve her current statue problem. When Trafalgar Square was laid out in the 1830s, Nelson was put in the middle and the plan of the architect, Sir Charles Barry, was for four other statues around it, of men who had done their country proud. The strategies which poor people have for making money go further are enormously sophisticated. She told me when she saw her son eating a baked potato with cheese, she thought ‘that’s 40p’, and as he ate his Jaffa cake afterwards, ‘that’s another 8p’.”I have stood humbled by what I have learned. Admonished for buying the child Jaffa Cakes rather than apples she responded that you get eight cakes in a pack which she can give out one a day to the child; whereas if she spent the same on apples she would have to cut them in quarters and give out one quarter a day, which is impractical as the other quarters would not keep.”Poor people have the wrong food in their trolleys because it is all they can afford,” she says “For them lunch is not a pleasure; it’s a calculation.

Chastised by the celebrated cook for being unadventurous about food, the woman “explained that she has so little money that she can’t risk buying anything that her son might refuse to eat”. Middle-class women buy them happily yet she saw them as part of the stigma of poverty,” she says.Yet she was also frank about her own prejudices which the young woman confounded. She is, as Caroline Waldegrave says, a woman who is completely lacking in self-importance. She demonstrates it even when dealing with low-income families as part of the Poverty Commission, whose ambitious brief is to define poverty, discover its extent, severity and causes and find out how to reduce it.”I recently went round a supermarket with a young single mum It was fascinating I found that she was ashamed of buying own-label products. I wanted to put my oar into the national debate on education. I was very keen on vocational skills; I didn’t like the way that things which were done with the hands, like cooking, were denigrated It’s been wonderful. Instead of thinking in the short-term – in cooking you’re always wondering whether a sauce is going to curdle in the next few seconds – it is nice to be thinking about the next century.”She does all this with an engaging air of humility.