Benefits Fraud Hotline (Hansard, 10 July 1997)

§ Mr. Denham

Fraud within a system designed to help those in need is anti-social behaviour. We will be vigilant in tackling benefit fraud but we will ensure that those in need are not victimised and have nothing to fear.

Questions on Benefits Agency operational matters are the responsibility of the Chief Executive, Peter Mathison. He will write to the hon. Member.

Letter from Peter Mathison to Mr. Paul Burstow, dated 9 July 1997: The Secretary of State for Social Security has asked me to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question asking how many malicious calls and well intended but unfounded calls were made to the Benefits Fraud Hotline in the last year; what is each as a percentage of the total number of calls; and what was the average cost of investigating each such call. Calls to the Hotline are not collated in the format you have requested. It may be helpful if I explain that since its introduction on 5 August 1996, the National Benefit Fraud Hotline received 243,556 calls up to the end of May 1997. Of this number 57,139 calls were from customers without information to report. These include callers requesting an update on a previous call and wrong numbers. The remaining calls undergo a sift process. Each case is scrutinised to establish whether a fraud investigation is appropriate. 186,417 calls have provided information which has been referred to Benefits Agency fraud staff for further scrutiny. So far, 148,071 referrals have been checked and of these 58,095 cases have been discarded with no further action undertaken. The remaining 89,976 cases have been referred for further investigation. The number of calls which so far have led to the detection of fraud is 11,597, which has generated weekly benefit savings of £35m. There are currently 53,356 calls on which results are outstanding. Discarded referrals include a proportion relating to malicious and well intended but unfounded calls as well as those reporting information already investigated and referrals not containing enough information to carry out an investigation. The number of discarded cases represent 24 per cent of the total number of calls received by the Hotline. Although we do not record the average cost of investigating these type of cases, it is possible, in broad terms, to estimate the average cost of an investigation based on the major components of fraud activity. It should be emphasized that investigations are diverse in nature, complexity and length. The average cost of an investigation is £43. I hope you find this reply helpful.