Angela Rayner
Main Page: Angela Rayner (Labour - Ashton-under-Lyne)Department Debates - View all Angela Rayner's debates with the Cabinet Office
(10 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)
Thank you; good morning, Mr Speaker.
I frequently stand at this Dispatch Box and ask the Minister about value for taxpayers’ money, because his Department is responsible for making sure that every penny is treated with the respect it deserves, especially during the cost of living crisis. With that in mind, can he give us an official estimate of the total cost of fraud to the UK across all sectors in 2022?
Alex Burghart
We are engaged in a constant battle against fraud. We do so with colleagues across Whitehall, and particularly in the Department for Work and Pensions and the Treasury. I look forward to the right hon. Lady’s next question.
Angela Rayner
I thank the Minister for that non-answer, but the public deserve to know. While he ducks and dives the question, I have discovered the answer. At a conference in Portsmouth last week, the UK fraud costs measurement committee distributed hard copies of its new report with a fresh new estimate: £219 billion is lost each year as a result of fraud. That is equivalent to this year’s entire central Government running costs budget for health, defence and policing put together. The figure does not even include covid fraud. Can he tell me how much of that money he has clawed back?
Alex Burghart
We have established the Public Sector Fraud Authority to clamp down on fraud. As a former DWP Minister, I assure the right hon. Lady that this Government go after fraud wherever it is found. Every time we find new opportunities for fraud, we come forward with new means of clamping down on them. We are a Government committed to efficiency, which we are delivering. As the right hon. Lady will have heard me say in answer to the first question this morning, the Cabinet Office, in the most recent financial year for which figures are available, delivered £3.4 billion-worth of savings to the British taxpayer. That is work we will continue to do.