| Counter-fraud exercise reaps rewards |
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| Thursday, 15 May 2008 | |
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Almost £10m worth of fraud and errors have been identified following a Scottish detection exercise.
The 2006/07 National Fraud Initiative (NFI) formed part of the audits of 74 participating bodies, including councils, police forces, fire and rescue services, health boards, the Scottish Public Pension Agency and the Student Award Agency for Scotland by Audit Scotland working together with other public bodies. Inconsistencies Information about deceased persons, public sector employees and pensioners, benefit applicants, failed asylum-seekers, expired visas and students was compared to look for inconsistencies that might suggest fraud or error and ‘matches’ passed to bodies to follow up using a secure website. This is the second time the National Fraud Initiative has been carried out extensively in Scotland. The auditor general for Scotland, Robert Black, said he was pleased that more public bodies took part this time and that, as a result, £9.7million of frauds, overpayments and errors were identified. Audit Scotland’s director of audit strategy, Russell Frith, said that the earlier 2004/05 NFI exercise helped identify the longest running fraud and error, and areas where public bodies could improve their controls. He added that most fraud and error found during the NFI for 2006/07 should only have run for two years at most. “It is encouraging that our NFI work is helping to improve the control systems in public bodies that prevent and detect fraud and error,” Frith concluded. Web-based system The cumulative outcome from these exercises in Scotland is now around £37 million and there were at least 75 successful prosecutions from the last exercise in 2004/05. The NFI in Scotland is similar to exercises undertaken elsewhere in the UK and data is processed by the Audit Commission in England using a sophisticated and secure web-based system. The NFI 2006/07 resulted in 186 pensions being stopped after NFI identified that the pensioner was deceased, 1,552 housing benefit cases involving public sector pensioners, 672 housing benefit cases involving public sector employees and 969 ‘blue badge’ disabled parking permits cancelled after NFI identified that the holder was deceased. Bodies are now seeking to recover around £2.8 million of overpayments and they will save about £3.9 million by preventing future incorrect pension payments. Employees dismissed or resigned The Procurator Fiscal has received 49 housing benefit cases so far from the 2006/07 NFI but this number is expected to increase significantly. As a result of NFI-related enquiries 17 employees were dismissed or resigned. Auditors found that the vast majority of participating bodies made satisfactory arrangements for managing their role in NFI and showed they were committed but pointed out that there was still scope for improvement. Audit Scotland is working to widen the scope of the NFI in line with the rest of the UK. Public bodies will provide information again in October this year as part of their 2008/09 audits and will have fresh information to investigate in early 2009. Related articles
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