Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people with a criminal conviction for benefit fraud were given a (a) custodial and (b) non-custodial sentence for that fraud in each of the last three years.

The information requested to answer the 3 questions is shown below.

(30342 & 30344)

In response to cases prosecuted in court and the number of people convicted for benefit fraud (a) and (b) the statistics for England and Wales can be found using this link:–

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-system-statistics-quarterly-december-2014

(Select and open “Outcomes by offence tables” under fraud offences you will find:

53.3 Benefit fraud offences - triable either way)

The statistics for Scotland can be found using this link:-

http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2016/02/6001

(Table 4a provides statistics on all convictions broken down by crime type; this includes a specific category for fraud).

(30342) How many cases of benefit fraud were identified in each of the last three years.

The information requested is not collated centrally and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.

(30343) Whilst the department does have some information, it has not been subjected to the rigorous quality assurance checks applied to our published official statistics.