Minister for the Cabinet Office (): Today the Government is
publishing the 2020-21 Fraud Landscape Report. This follows the
establishment of the new Public Sector Fraud Authority (PSFA) in
August last year to raise the government’s ambition across the
public sector in understanding risks and reducing fraud.
The report continues to push the government's transparency agenda
by publishing data on the level of detected and estimated fraud
and error in the public sector. This report estimates fraud and
error losses for central government (excluding those relating to
tax and welfare, which are published separately by HMRC and DWP).
In 2020-2021, fraud detection figures grew by 7% on the previous
year with departments and public bodies detecting £243 million of
fraud, in line with government's objective to continue to focus
on the identification and reduction in fraud. These figures
include fraud related to schemes in support of the pandemic.
The report shows how the government adjusted the Counter Fraud
Function to focus on fraud around the COVID-19 schemes. This was
achieved by establishing a COVID-19 intelligence hotline,
utilising data analytics and assessing the levels of fraud in all
COVID-19 schemes, so that the Centre of Expertise were able to
coordinate a unified approach to countering fraud.
The government has continued to develop its capability to take
action on fraud. There are now 7,011 individuals, from 35
organisations, who are members of the world's first Counter Fraud
Profession meeting our target.
In 2020/21, an additional 99 counter fraud colleagues from across
government were trained in the new discipline of fraud risk
assessment. This has helped us to better understand fraud at the
commencement of government initiatives, a particularly helpful
skill in the wake of the pandemic.
This government attaches importance to transparency and the
improvements it can bring in fraud detection and prevention right
across the public sector. While efforts to support departments
and public bodies during the pandemic delayed work on this
report, the PSFA intends to publish a bulletin with the data from
2021-2022 in the first half of 2023.
