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Social Security Benefits: Fraud

Answer

Fines for benefit fraud can be issued only by the courts and are managed by Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service.However, the Department does have the power to issue administrative penalties as a punishment for benefit fraud, which are similar to fines. The following tables provide information on the number of administrative penalties issued and the amount that has been recovered from these penalties:

	Number of administrative penalties issued
2006-07	9,810
2007-08	8,566
2008-09	7,160
2009-10	7,249
Note:
Data are not yet available for 2010-11.
Source:
Fraud and Error by Sector (FIBS) and Fraud Referral and Intervention Management System (FRAIMS). The figures are Management Information (MI) collected for the purpose of routine administration, and therefore have not been subjected to the rigorous quality assurance that is applied to DWP official statistics.

	Total recoveries from administrative penalties (£ million)
2008-09	1.8
2009-10	1.7
2010-11	1.6
Note:
Data on the amount recovered prior to 2008-09 are not available.
Source:
The figures provided are from Shared Services Debt Manager via Business Objects computer system and are subject to rounding. The figures are Management Information (MI) collected for the purpose of routine administration, and therefore have not been subjected to the rigorous quality assurance that is applied to DWP official statistics.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

53368; 528 c102-3W

Session

2010-12

Subjects

Fraud Social security benefits

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

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