Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate his Department has made of the cost to the public purse of theft and fraud to (a) his Department, (b) its agencies and (c) its non-departmental public bodies in each of the last ten years.

In 2011 the government established the Fraud, Error and Debt Taskforce to develop and coordinate the delivery of initiatives across government as previously no systematic attempt had been made. Since 2012/13 the department has therefore published a total for overall detected fraud in the department consolidated accounts. Available on GOV.UK at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/dfe-annual-reports.

Since 2017 Cabinet Office have also published annual detected fraud figures for all central departments and related bodies. Also available on GOV.UK at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cross-government-fraud-landscape-annual-report-2017.

Fraud and error figures for Executive Agencies (EA’s) and Non-Department Public Bodies in years prior to 2013-14 were not collected centrally and therefore unavailable. From 2013-14 onwards, the department reported fraud figures to the Cabinet Office in line with their definition of fraud costs and covered all EA’s and Arm’s Length Bodies. Following machinery of government changes from June 2016 onwards, the department also supplies figures for higher education and further education including the Student Loan Company.

The figures shown are taken from published material in the accounts or the Cross Government Fraud Landscape Annual report.