Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether members of the public who submit reports to her Department on potential benefit fraud receive updates on the development of such cases.

Members of the public are not given any progress updates concerning allegations of benefit fraud they may have made.

All information gathered or received during the course of an investigation is confidential and must not be disclosed to any unauthorised third party. Third party information falls under the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998 and can only be released where such disclosure would not breach a person’s right to privacy or the Data Protection Act principles.