§ Mr. Frank FieldTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security, pursuant to his answer of 12 March,Official Report, column 751, if he will further break down the data showing the age of the pensioners with an income of less than £5,000 per year into separate tables for single pensioners and pensioner couples.
§ Miss WiddecombeEstimates are in the table.
Letter from Mr. M. Bichard to Dr. Norman Godman, dated 18 March 1993:
As Chief Executive of the Benefits Agency, it is my responsibility to answer questions about relevant operational matters. I am therefore replying to your recent Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Social Security asking on how many occasions social security fraud was detected in (a) Inverclyde, (b) Strathclyde and (c) Scotland as a whole in each of the past three years; how many persons were proceeded against; and of these how many were convicted by the courts.I regret that I am unable to provide separate figures for Inverclyde or Strathclyde as the Benefits Agency is organised in Areas which do not always correspond geographically to town or county boundaries.The Sector Fraud organisation has only been in existence since January 1991 and the first full year for which figures are available is the year ended April 1992. During this period a total of 26,600 social security investigations into Fraud were undertaken in Scotland by officers of the Benefits Agency.In the year ending 31 March 1990, 1,185 cases were sent for consideration of proceedings in Scotland as a whole. Of this number 1,084 were convicted by the courts. In the year ending 31 March 1991 the number of cases submitted was 1,037 of which 887 resulted in convictions and in the year ending 31 March 1992 the figures were 847 submissions and 785 convictions.You may be interested to know that from the year commencing April 1992 we have been compiling prosecution statistics for each of our operational areas. This will enable us to provide, from the year ending April 1993, information for smaller geographical areas.I hope that you find this reply helpful. A copy will appear in the Official Report and a copy will also be placed in the Library.