The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Jeremy Quin)
Today the Government are publishing the 2020-21 fraud landscape report. This follows the establishment of the new Public Sector Fraud Authority (PSFA) in August last year to raise the Government’s ambition across the public sector in understanding risks and reducing fraud.
The report continues to push the Government’s transparency agenda by publishing data on the level of detected and estimated fraud and error in the public sector. The report estimates fraud and error losses for central Government—excluding those relating to tax and welfare, which are published separately by His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions.
In 2020-21, fraud detection figures grew by 7% on the previous year, with Departments and public bodies detecting £243 million of fraud, in line with the Government’s objective of continuing to focus on identifying and reducing fraud. These figures include fraud related to schemes in support of the pandemic.
The report shows how the Government adjusted the counter-fraud function to focus on fraud around the covid-19 schemes. This was achieved by establishing a covid-19 intelligence hotline, utilising data analytics and assessing the levels of fraud in all covid-19 schemes, so that the centre of expertise was able to co-ordinate a unified approach to countering fraud.
The Government have continued to develop their capability to take action on fraud. There are now 7,011 individuals, from 35 organisations, who are members of the world’s first counter-fraud profession meeting our target.
In 2020-21, an additional 99 counter-fraud colleagues from across Government were trained in the new discipline of fraud risk assessment. This has helped us to better understand fraud at the commencement of Government initiatives—a particularly helpful skill in the wake of the pandemic.
This Government attach importance to transparency and the improvements they can bring in fraud detection and prevention right across the public sector. While efforts to support Departments and public bodies during the pandemic delayed work on this report, the PSFA intends to publish a bulletin with the data from 2021-22 in the first half of 2023.
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