Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Attorney General, how many and what proportion of people that were due to be prosecuted for benefit fraud have had their prosecution proceedings terminated in the latest period for which figures are available; and for what reasons were those proceedings terminated.

Allegations of benefit fraud are investigated by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and Local Authority investigators. DWP and Local Authority investigators have discretion to apply an administrative penalty or refer to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) or Local Authority prosecutors for a decision on whether to prosecute.

The records held by the CPS identify the number of offences in which a prosecution commenced and reached a first hearing in magistrates’ courts, rather than the number of people prosecuted. A single defendant may be prosecuted for multiple offences.

No central records of the prosecution outcomes of offences are held by the CPS. To obtain details of the number of people prosecuted and whose proceedings were stopped by the CPS, for offences of benefit fraud would require a manual exercise of reviewing individual case files to be undertaken at a disproportionate cost.

Furthermore, cases of benefit fraud are also prosecuted by Local Authorities so any data the CPS can glean from a manual exercise would not provide a complete record.