Charlotte Leslie – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Charlotte Leslie on 2016-09-12.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 18 April 2016 to Question 32920, what processes his Department uses to collect information on allegations of fraudulent benefit claims; and what assessment has been made of the effectiveness of those processes.

Caroline Nokes

There are a variety of ways that allegations of Benefit Fraud are collected and received by the DWP including telephone calls to the National Benefit Fraud Hotline, online and Letter and Data matching. Once an allegation has been received and, if it meets the required criteria containing enough information, a Fraud Referral Form is completed which is then entered into the internal Fraud Referral and Information Management System.

The effectiveness of these processes is measured by statistics produced and published in May each year and made available in the public domain. These statistics are used to evaluate, develop and support fraud and error policy, strategy and operational decisions.