§ Mr. Lawsonasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will provide a table showing, for each year from 1973 to 1978, inclusive (a) the total number of staff concerned with the disbursement of supplementary benefit, (b) the total number of such staff devoted to the detection of fraud and similar investigative duties, and (c) the latter expressed as a percentage of the former.
926W
§ Mr. OrmeAll staff in local offices of my Department are concerned to some extent with the prevention of fraudulent claims for social security benefits. Their general experience, coupled with their alertness and the intelligent application of the prescribed procedures for dealing with claims, forms the first stage of defence against fraud and abuse of benefits.
There are special investigators employed by my Department wholly or mainly on the investigation or suspected fraudulent claims and the table below shows the number of supplementary benefit staff in local offices, and the number of special investigators at the financial years ending 1972–73 to 1977–78.
At year ending 31st March Staff complement for supplementary benefit work in local offices Staff-complement of special investigators 1973 23,994 337 1974 24,360 385 1975 26,243 385 1976 29,983 402 1977 31,840 410 1978 32,507 442 The staffing figures relate to local offices only, as regional office and Headquarters staffing figures do not have their supplementary benefit element recorded separately. They also relate to complements on a given date—that is, the number of posts authorised—not the number of staff actually in post which would be rather lower.
In addition, there are other staff who are fully engaged on work connected with fraud investigation, but records are not available to make such posts readily identifiable. The fact that many of these staff cover both the contributory benefit and supplementary benefit fields adds to the difficulty of separately identifying the supplementary benefit element. As a consequence it is not possible to provide full answers to parts (b) and (c) of the Question, but estimates made in 1975 and 1977 suggest that, excluding the special investigators referred to above, the resources devoted to supplementary benefit fraud work amounted to the equivalent of 500 and 750 posts respectively.