Philip Davies – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Attorney General

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Philip Davies on 2014-05-06.

To ask the Attorney General, how many (a) men and (b) women have been (i) investigated, (ii) given an administrative penalty, (iii) given a caution and (iv) convicted in court for benefit fraud since the prosecution of such cases was transferred to the Law Officers’ Department.

Oliver Heald

Allegations of benefit fraud are investigated by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Administrative penalties are financial penalties, which can be offered as an alternative to prosecution, where there has been no previous fraud penalty of any form. These are issued by the DWP and Local Authorities. Cautions are issued by the Police.

The records held by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) identify the number of offences in which a prosecution commenced and, reached a first hearing in magistrates’ courts, rather than the number of defendants prosecuted and convicted or their gender.

No central records of the prosecution outcomes of offences are held by the CPS. To obtain details of the number of people prosecuted for and convicted of offences of benefit fraud, which can be charged under various sections of the Social Security Administration Act 1992, Section 35 of the Tax Credits Act 2002 or the Fraud Act 2006, including their gender, would require a manual exercise of reviewing individual case files to be undertaken at a disproportionate cost.

Furthermore, cases of benefit fraud are also prosecuted by Local Authorities so any data the CPS can glean from a manual exercise would not provide a complete record.