Fraud (Hansard, 3 April 2000)

§ 28. Mr. Bercow
To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will make a statement on the progress made by his Department in combating fraud in the social security system. [115892]

§ Mr. Rooker
We set out our strategy for combating fraud and reducing error in "Safeguarding Social Security", published on 23 March 1999. We are putting this strategy into practice with strong and sensible safeguards to ensure the right money goes to the right people.

§ 33. Mr. Brooke
To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will make a statement on the Government's interaction with local authorities in the detection and prevention of benefit fraud. [115898]

§ Angela Eagle
Local authorities are responsible for the administration of Housing Benefit and we are working in partnership with them in developing and implementing anti-fraud initiatives such as the Verification Framework and the use of direct computer links between local authorities and the Department's benefit systems. We have recently reformed the anti-fraud financial incentive
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scheme for local authorities to ensure they can be rewarded for detecting and prosecuting cases of fraud and for the longer term we are working with local authority representatives to develop revised incentives for rewarding local authorities for their efforts to prevent, detect and deter fraud.
We have also made available extra funding for local joint anti-fraud activities between local authorities and the Benefits Agency in addition to funding for national initiatives.

§ Mr. Field
To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security, pursuant to his oral statement of 27 March 2000,Official Report, column 42, concerning 400 new fraud investigators (1) what the net increase in fraud investigation staff will be for each of the organisations relevant to his announcement when the recruitment is completed; [117277]
(2) how many of the new investigators will be recruited to each relevant organisation. [117278]

§ Mr. Rooker
This Department and the Revenue Departments are in discussion about the best deployment of additional staff to meet the business need identified by the noble Lord Grabiner. No decision has yet been made as to how many new investigators will be recruited to each relevant organisation.