Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, with reference to the Government efficiency savings: technical note, 2021, published on 28 March 2022, which Department the savings of the identification of properties fraudulently declared empty when they were in fact occupied were allocated to.

These savings, £63,602, were generated through the work of the Cabinet Office National Fraud Initiative (NFI) for private sector utilities companies, rather than government departments, as a result of proactive data analytics using government data. The NFI is a data matching exercise which involves 1200 organisations from across the UK. Since 1996, more than £2bn of fraud or error has been detected or prevented through the NFI.

In this particular case, information provided to the NFI, primarily for the prevention and detection of public sector fraud, has also been utilised to prevent fraudulent losses for private sector utilities companies. Fraudsters operate across the public and private sector. In order to best minimise government and private sector losses, it is important that we also collaborate across organisations and sectors wherever possible. These savings derive from a strategy to work across the public and private sector to deliver counter fraud benefits for the whole of the UK economy. This is aligned to the Government’s Economic Crime Plan that sets out how both sectors will work together to tackle economic crime.