NAO report finds Home Office using data that is six years old
A spending watchdog report has found that the Home Office uses out of date information and fundamentally fails to understand the impact and cost that fraud has in the UK.
The National Audit Office (NAO) claims that the current estimated cost of fraud that the government uses is based on information from six years ago. In addition to this, it was found the Home Office could not accurately calculate the impact that fraud plays on either individuals or businesses.
A staggering 987,000 incidents of fraud were recorded in England and Wales in the year ending June 2022, making up 41% of crimes recorded. Perhaps even more shocking is that only 4,816 cases, in the year ending March 2022, resulted in a criminal charge.
The NAO report stated:
“The [Home Office] does not have a complete or up-to-date estimate of the cost of fraud to the economy.
Its most recent estimate of the cost of fraud to individuals is £4.7bn [in 2015-16 prices]. This is based on 2015-16 data and the department is currently working on a more up-to-date estimate.
It does not have any reliable estimate of the cost of fraud to businesses. It also has a limited understanding of the perpetrators of fraud or those who enable it by their action or inaction.”
Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said:
“Five years on from our last report on this subject, the Home Office has taken limited action to improve its response to fraud.
Its approach has lacked clarity of purpose, it does not have the data it needs to understand the full scale of the problem, and it is not able to accurately measure the impact of its policies on this growing area of crime.
For its planned fraud strategy to succeed, the Home Office must be vigorous in leading a cross-government response that is informed by a thorough understanding of what works in combatting fraud.”
The NAO concluded by suggesting the Home Office complete its anti-fraud strategy, find accurate and up-to-date estimates of the cost and impact of fraud to individuals and businesses, and gain a better understanding of internationals work in order to tackle the rising issue of fraud.
