HC Deb 17 October 1990 vol 177 cc815-6W
Mr. Tony Banks

To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) when the refugee monitoring and review programme was started at Woodgrange Park house, Forest Gate, London; and how many refugee cases were then in the office;

(2) what method of identifying refugee status was used when fraud section staff inspected files at Woodgrange Park house, Forest Gate, London;

(3) how many fraudulent claims have been discovered through the refugee monitoring and review programme at Woodgrange Park house, Forest Gate, London.

Mrs. Gillian Shephard

No system of monitoring and controlling claims from refugees has been used at Woodgrange Park house. Consequently, there has been no such identification of fraudulent claims. Normally statistics are not held on the number of claims from refugees, but in order to assess the resources needed to deal with an influx of claims, a special count was made on 19 July 1990. Identification of these claims was made in the normal way from claim forms, and as a result a total of 1,200 claims from refugees was identified on that date.

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