§ Mr. DrewTo ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will make a statement on the Department's policy towards providing incentives for local authority procedures for reducing housing benefit fraud. [34423]
§ Malcolm WicksOur immediate priority for Housing Benefit is to work with local authorities to drive up standards across the board, tackle fraud and error and promote work incentives. We have introduced a wide range of measures providing incentives for local authorities to tackle housing benefit fraud.
In November 1997 we launched the Benefit Fraud Inspectorate to help raise standards in secure housing benefit administration. The BFI has so far published 116 reports helping local authorities to tackle weaknesses in their services and identifying and spreading good practice.
In April 1998 we tightened the criteria for establishing fraud to prevent abuse of the Weekly Benefit Savings scheme which was originally introduced in 1993.
In May 1998 we introduced the Verification Framework to help prevent fraud and error from entering the housing benefit system and help to detect it when it occurs. £160 million has been made available from April 2001 to fund local authorities which sign up to the Verification Framework, and over 75 per cent. of authorities have now done so.
In April 2001 we introduced a comprehensive new anti-fraud scheme for local authorities that provides a broader range of financial incentives to prevent, detect, punish and prosecute fraud than did the old Weekly Benefit Savings scheme. To fund these two schemes we have made £180 million available since April 2001. Sixty-three authorities adopted the new scheme in April 2001 and the remaining authorities will do so in April this year.