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Councillors: Arun

Answer

This is an operational matter for the Audit Commission and I have asked the chief executive of the Audit Commission to write to the hon. Member direct.Letter from Steve Bundred, dated 17 March 2009:"Your Parliamentary Question on what the Audit Commission's evidential basis was for the use of its statutory powers to obtain the personal bank account details of Arun councillors has been passed to me for reply.""The request is not limited to councillors. All payroll data is treated in the same way whether it is a salary, members' allowance or other remuneration. Payroll data is one of the key sets of data matched under the National Fraud Initiative (NFI). For example, by matching payroll data to Housing Benefit claimants' data, we can identify potential fraudulent claims or overpayments.""NFI data processing looks at whether the bank account number and sort code is the same or different in the data provided. This information is then converted into a flag of either 'Yes' the bank details are the same on each data set or 'No' the bank details are different. It is this flag that is included in the NFI reports that helps those participating in the NFI exercise to prioritise cases where income has, for example, potentially been withheld (e.g. in an undeclared bank account). This data is highly significant in the fight against fraud and, in a previous NFI exercise, this information led to the detection of an additional bank account containing capital in excess of £100,000 that was not declared by the housing benefit claimant.""Although the bank account and sort code are included on the payroll data specification, the name in which the bank account is held is not collected so the Audit Commission cannot make a connection to other account holders or transactions. All the data collected for the National Fraud Initiative is treated with the utmost sensitivity and its use is strictly controlled as set out in the Code of Data Matching Practice, which was laid before Parliament on 21 July 2008. In line with the Code, all original data provided to the Commission will be destroyed and rendered irrecoverable by the Commission at the end of the exercise."

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

489 c1100-1W;489 c1102-3W; 263050

Session

2008-09

Related items

Councillors: Arun
Monday, 19 January 2009
Written questions
House of Commons

Subjects

Councillors Arun

Link

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