§ Mr. David CameronTo ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what the administrative costs of the Social Fund were in each of the last five financial years; and if he will make a statement. [82079]
845W
§ Malcolm Wicks(pursuant to my written reply 19 December 2002, col. 1020W.)
The information is not available in the format requested and could be provided only at disproportionate cost. The Department now accounts for its administration and benefit expenditure by Strategic Objective, as set out in its Public Service Agreements (PSA), and by individual Requests for Resources (RfRs) as set out in the Departmental Estimates and Accounts.
Estimates of the cost of administering the Social Fund are available for 1997–98 and 1998–99 and these are shown in the table.
£ Financial year Estimated Social Fund expenditure1 1997–98 161,000,000 1998–99 215,000,000 Note:
Costs are rounded to the nearest £million
Source:
Social Security Departmental Reports 1999–2000 (Figure 50) and 2000–01 to 2001–02 (Figure 42).
Targeting Fraud Website May 2000—December 2002 Month Number of hits1 Number of cases of suspected fraud reported Number of cases accepted for action by investigation staff Number of investigations completed Number of resulting benefit rate changes2 Number of successful prosecutions May 2000 — 3 1 1 0 0 June 2000 — 80 27 3 0 0 July 2000 — 93 35 7 1 0 August 2000 — 75 27 18 5 0 September 2000 31,311,930 95 28 13 2 0 October 2000 — 89 29 27 4 0 November 2000 — 81 18 28 6 0 December 2000 — 41 14 13 1 0 January 2001 11,516 68 35 21 5 0 February 2001 58,620 71 22 25 2 0 March 2001 49,027 242 83 28 2 0 April 2001 19,349 317 102 36 9 1 May 2001 8,659 172 60 46 8 0 June 2001 16,475 197 61 54 13 0 July 2001 19,203 144 61 64 12 0 August 2001 15,617 117 39 45 12 0 September 2001 50,905 160 41 57 14 0 October 2001 14,328 200 86 48 12 0 November 2001 22,825 241 111 52 16 1 December 2001 13,382 190 70 48 11 0 January 2002 15,103 384 159 62 15 2 February 2002 14,027 315 134 88 18 0 March 2002 12,548 297 143 73 12 0 April 2002 11,011 333 125 88 18 1 May 2002 9,512 309 127 116 20 2 June 2002 11,293 226 88 86 28 1 July 2002 8,797 244 94 98 26 1 August 2002 7,043 240 69 86 18 1 September 2002 10,182 251 90 87 25 0 October 2002 6,658 318 129 112 37 3 November 2002 8,843 289 118 83 25 1 December 2002 9,202 203 85 72 25 4 Total 1,736,055 6,085 2,311 1,685 402 18 1 Information provided by the National Benefit Fraud Hotline. 2 The number of benefit rate changes includes both increases and decreases both due to client error and to official error. This is not the number of frauds proven, for which data is not available. 3 For the month of December 2000 the total figure includes the number of hits from May 2000 until December 2000 and these cannot be broken down by month. Figures were not accessible, at that time, without incurring disproportionate costs. 4 The fraud database shows completed cases commenced in the relevant period. Due to the elapsed time between commencement of an investigation and completion of a prosecution there are cases which are inserted into previously completed data for earlier periods. All totals are therefore correct at the time when quoted but subject to adjustment at a later date. Source:
Fraud Information By Sector system4