Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what estimate he has made of the (a) number of cheques sent to HM Revenue and Customs that were fraudulently intercepted and (b) value of these cheques in each month since December 2013.
The table below sets out the information requested where it is alleged that cheques intended for HMRC were fraudulently intercepted with context comparing these cases with the total number of cheques and related value processed by HMRC.
Year | Month | No. of cases reported | Value of cases | Total cheques banked Dec 13 - Dec 14 | ||||
2013 | December | 19 | £37,125.42 | Volume | 5,765,106 | |||
2014 | January | 12 | £17,889.40 | Value | £22,127,227,566 | |||
February | 9 | £28,082.49 | ||||||
March | 37 | £106,859.00 | Stolen cheques as a percentage | |||||
April | 11 | £18,496.89 | Volume | 0.0032% | ||||
May | 14 | £29,668.29 | Value | 0.0017% | ||||
June | 15 | £60,297.28 | ||||||
July | 20 | £28,223.64 | ||||||
August | 19 | £24,241.32 | ||||||
September | 8 | £11,732.22 | ||||||
October | 7 | £7,135.32 | ||||||
November | 9 | £7,799.25 | ||||||
December | 3 | £8,747.92 | ||||||
183 | £386,298.44 |
HMRC encourages customers, through Internet and other guidance material not to pay by cheque and to take advantage of more secure payment methods and pay electronically.