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Home Office

Answer

Dr. Pugh: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps his Department takes to prevent fraud against private enterprises by people impersonating individuals known to be dead. [218453] Mr. Browne: The Home Office-led Identity Fraud Steering Committee, which comprises public and private sector organisations that are committed to reducing identity fraud, began a project in November 2004 to explore the benefits, feasibility and legal impediments of sharing public sector deceased person information with private sector organisations involved in fraud prevention. The organisations involved are the Home Office, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and CIFAS--the UK's Fraud Prevention Service. CIFAS membership includes more than 200 companies covering sectors such as financial services, utilities and insurance. The first phase of the project involved a sample of 50confirmed impersonation of deceased (IOD) cases. These were processed against ONS data on deceased people to establish whether the fraud could have been detected and prevented had the ONS data been available to CIFAS members when the fraudsters' applications were processed. The project found that sharing this data would not have a significant impact on reducing this type of fraud. The second phase of the project is exploring the benefits of sharing deceased person data held by DWP to reduce deceased person fraud. This includes confirming whether the data held by DWP would help to reduce IOD fraud; running the same cases of IOD fraud (as used in the first phase) against the information held by DWP; and establishing whether any "showstoppers" or legal impediments exist that would prevent DWP data on deceased people from being shared with the private sector. Initial results suggest that sharing DWP data may help to reduce IOD fraud, but further work is needed to evaluate the benefits that could be obtained. This work is now under way along with an examination of any possible legal impediments to sharing the data.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

431 c1313-4W;431 c1307-8W; 218453

Session

2004-05

Subjects

Databases Crime prevention Death Companies Department for Work and Pensions Fraud Private sector Personal records Personation Proof of identity Office for National Statistics Departmental coordination

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk