More than £400m of taxpayer money has been saved by the National Fraud initiative (NFI), bringing total counter fraud savings to £2.4bn, according to the Cabinet Office. For example, around 42,000 fraudulent disabled blue badges were being used; and in more than 225,000 cases discounted travel cards of people who had died or didn’t qualify for concessions have been blocked.
Interim CEO of the Public Sector Fraud Authority Mark Cheeseman said: “Every day, people are attacking taxpayer funded services for their own gain. The Public Sector Fraud Authority, where the National Fraud Initiative is now based, is part of a wider investment across government to rise to this challenge. In a difficult context, these latest results are still the best since the National Fraud Initiative started in 1996 – stopping more fraud than at any other point in its history and protecting public money and public services. This achievement is a testament to the work of public servants across the United Kingdom, including Local Authorities and NHS Trusts, who are striving to find and stop fraud.”
PSFA background
The newly-established Public Sector Fraud Authority (PSFA) has been funded with £25m with a target of saving £180m for the taxpayer by April 2023. The PSFA houses the National Counter Fraud Data Analytics Service which includes the NFI, putting the use of data and analytics at the heart of the response to fraud. The new Authority will be working across central government.
Numerous parliamentary reports have pointed to shortcomings and failures in policing and prevention of fraud, the UK’s number one crime by volume. In a speech earlier this month in the Houses of Parliament, Gareth Davies, the head of the National Audit Office (NAO) described fraud during the covid pandemic as an ‘area of heightened risk’: “Government correctly identified that the speed at which it rolled out schemes such as furlough and bounce back loans would lead to a high risk of fraud. And they were right. But, we found that government should have addressed some of those vulnerabilities to fraud more quickly. Billions were stolen from taxpayers, and recovering as much as possible remains an essential task.”
