Housing Benefit Fraud (Hansard, 7 February 2000)

§ Angela Eagle

We are committed to taking tough action to combat Housing Benefit fraud. We havereformed the anti-fraud financial incentive scheme for local authorities to ensure they can be rewarded for detecting and prosecuting cases of fraud; made an additional £100 million available over the next three years to encourage them to adopt the Verification Framework, which, through a series of checks throughout the period of a benefit claim, will help make Housing Benefit administration more secure; invited all local authorities to participate in the Royal Mail "do not redirect" initiative which prevents benefit claimants from using Royal Mail's postal redirection arrangements to make false claims to benefit from multiple addresses. Already, around 250 local authorities are operating this scheme and many more are preparing to implement it; made £4 million available to install computer terminals in local authorities which provide access to the Department's benefit systems. We are now looking to extend this initiative to include exchanging information electronically between local authorities and the Department, providing further scope to prevent fraud and error occurring in the first place.