NHS: Fraud
(asked on 12th October 2016) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how much money was (a) restrained and (b) confiscated by (i) NHS Protect and (ii) local counter-fraud specialists as a result of the discovery of wrongdoing within the NHS in each year since 2009-10.
The purpose of a restraint order is to prevent the dissipation of assets and retain their availability for any subsequent confiscation following conviction. A restraint order includes property and non-monetary assets, to which a provisional (unconfirmed) value is applied. This value may vary significantly during the period of restraint for reasons of depreciation of fixed assets or fluctuations in market value. For this reason, information is not held on the amount of money restrained by individual financial year.
The total value of confiscation orders executed by NHS Protect Financial Investigators is in the table.
Financial Year | Number of confiscation orders | Total confiscation value |
2009/10 | 0 | £0 |
2010/11 | 4 | £93,222 |
2011/12 | 5 | £173,363 |
2012/13 | 2 | £43,383 |
2013/14 | 4 | £178,228 |
2014/15 | 1 | £1 |
2015/16 | 11 | £2,406,839 |
Notes:
1 Entries include values listed as £1 which relate to nominal orders where the individual does not have realisable assets, but may have in the future.
2 The values stated represent those monies subject to confiscation under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, and do not represent the full value of monies recovered as a result of fraud investigations.
3 Powers of restraint and confiscation are not available to Local Counter Fraud Specialists.