Fraud detected within central government more than doubles to £73m: Cabinet Office

Detected fraud within central government – outside the welfare and tax systems – rose from £29.7m in 2014/15 to £73.6m in 2015/16, a report from the Cabinet Office has revealed.

The report, Cross-government fraud landscape annual report 2017, said that £18.4m had been recovered in 2015/16. The amount of fraud that government was preventing also increased, from £9m in 2013/14 to £33m.

The Cabinet Office said the Government had started a push to find more fraud in 2013/14 and “progress is positive”.

It added that it believed the reasons for the increase in detected and prevented fraud were due to:

• an improvement in the quality and comprehensiveness of reporting as a result of a focus in this area;
• an increased focus on the risk of fraud across government; and,
• a drive by the Cabinet Office to develop established methodologies for measuring prevented fraud.

“It is also possible that the prevalence of fraud is going up across all sectors, including the public sector,” it acknowledged.

The Cabinet Office said the Government was tackling fraud by:

• increasing its capability by launching the Counter Fraud Profession;
• setting government-wide standards to improve consistency across the public sector;
• actively increasing the use of data sharing and analytics to prevent and detect fraud; and
• delivering an internal Fraud Initiative which bans public sector employees dismissed for fraud from working in the public sector for five years.

Minister for the Constitution Chris Skidmore said: “The rise in the amount of fraud that has been detected and prevented has been due to the hard work of public sector workers, but there is always more we can do to tackle this scourge which takes money away from hard-working taxpayers.

“Before 2010, government departments were reporting much lower levels of fraud and this is something we should be wary of. Fraud is a hidden crime and from 2010, with the Government strengthening activity to look for, identify and report fraud we have seen more of it uncovered.

“The Government is coming together to increase its capability to detect and deal with fraud through ground-breaking initiatives such as the creation and adoption of standards and the launch of the government Counter Fraud Profession. These actions demonstrate our strong commitment to successfully tackling fraud.”