The Cabinet Office has said the government’s National Fraud Initiative has saved the public purse more than £300m over the past two financial years through data comparison exercises that bring together 1,200 organisations.
It announced today that work to compare company payroll data alongside benefit records had enabled £144.8m in occupational pension fraud and overpayments to be identified during the 24-month period, and £32.6m in fraudulent or wrongly-received council tax discounts.
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Other headline figures included £24.9m in housing benefit fraud or overpayment; £25.5m in misrepresentation related to social housing waiting lists; £18m worth of blue badge misuse, with 31,223 such badges for the disabled revoked or withdrawn. A further £5m in savings were related to tenancy fraud.
Constitution minister Chloe Smith said she was delighted with the savings the initiative had been able to make for UK taxpayers.
“We are determined to build a fairer society, and stopping a small group of unscrupulous people who break the law will help us achieve this,” she said.
The Cabinet Office said the savings were equivalent to the annual salary for 7,843 full-time teachers.
It added that £275.3m of the total savings related to England alone.