Louise Haigh – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Cabinet Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Louise Haigh on 2016-02-29.

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what estimate he has made of the scale of fraud carried out against the public sector by (a) individuals and (b) serious and organised criminals by means of (i) identity theft and (ii) creation of fake identities.

Matthew Hancock

We do not have any estimates on the scale of public fraud carried out by individuals or by serious and organised criminals in relation to identity theft or the creation of fake identities.

In the financial year 2014/15, £4.13m worth of detected external identity theft was reported to the Cabinet Office through the fraud and error MI collection. Identity theft includes: fraudulently obtained genuine documents; counterfeit documents; and, forged documents. We do not have a breakdown of whether this was committed by individuals or organised criminals.

The National Crime Agency, not the Cabinet Office, lead on matters related to serious and organised crime.