§ Bob RussellTo ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what monitoring has been done to ascertain the effect of human rights legislation on the efficiency of investigating benefit fraud; and if he will make a statement. [29745]
§ Malcolm WicksThe Department takes account of human rights legislation in the training, deployment and tasking of its fraud officers.
Policy and organisational changes both inside and outside the Department have improved its efficiency in investigating benefit fraud. For example, the Professional Standards Unit undertakes an independent inspection of the standard of surveillance applications across the Department and the Department is subject to independent inspection by the Office of the Surveillance Commissioner.
It is not possible to identify separately the improvements in efficiency that are due specifically to human rights legislation.