HC Deb 13 November 2000 vol 356 cc520-1W
22. Mr. Gray

To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will make a statement on the amount of benefit fraud detected since May 1997. [136129]

Mr. Rooker

The estimated loss due to fraud is £2 billion per year. We have now increased the targets for reducing the amount of fraud and error in the system. We are now aiming to reduce the losses from fraud and error in Income Support and Jobseeker's Allowance, the two most vulnerable benefits, by 25 per cent. by March 2004, rising to 50 per cent. by March 2006.

30. Sir Sydney Chapman

To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will make a statement on the progress of his initiatives to tackle Housing Benefit fraud. [136137]

Angela Eagle

We continue to give tackling Housing Benefit fraud a very high priority. One of our key objectives is to prevent fraud and error from entering the system. To this end, we are taking initiatives to ensure that information flows freely between local authorities and the DepartmentWe allocated £4 million funding to local authorities to install Remote Access Terminals (RATs), which give staff access to the Department's benefit systems. 404 local authorities have at least one RAT. We have funded Electronic Transfer of Data (ETD). This means that many millions of paper forms, previously sent by the Benefits Agency to local authorities through the post, are now sent electronically.

Links between the Department's benefit systems and local authorities are complemented by other initiatives to prevent and detect fraud and error: £100 million has been made available to local authorities to implement the Verification Framework by 2001. We have specified minimum standards for the verification of the identity of claimants, so preventing fraud from entering the system. To date, 253 local authorities have received set-up costs and 185 have been certified as compliant. 352 local authorities have signed up for the Royal Mail "Do not redirect" service funded by the Department. This prevents fraudsters having benefit mail redirected to a different address. Reform of the anti-fraud financial incentive scheme is in progress, to ensure that local authorities can be rewarded for securing the end-to-end claims process.

Mr. Webb

To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security, pursuant to his answer of 9 June 2000,Official Report, column 408W, on housing benefit fraud, if he will provide corresponding data for 1999–2000. [138048]

Mr. Rooker

The information requested is not yet available for 1999–2000.