Over £2bn of taxpayers’ money protected against fraud

An anti-fraud scheme run by the Cabinet Office has detected or prevented more than £2 billion of fraud since it was launched 25 years ago, helping to protect public money.

The National Fraud Initiative plays a critical role in identifying people trying to defraud the public sector, ensuring taxpayers’ money goes towards delivering vital services, instead of ending up in the wrong hands.

Since it was established in 1996, the NFI has also helped public bodies prevent more than £300 million of Council Tax discount scams, £370 million of housing benefit fraud, almost £850 million of pension payments being made in error and has taken more than 183,000 fraudulently claimed disabled parking badges out of circulation.

Cabinet Office Minister, Lord Agnew, said: “The work done by the National Fraud Initiative is keeping nefarious fingers out of the public purse, protecting funding which can go towards essential services such as the NHS. It’s entirely right that British taxpayers expect the government to protect their hard-earned money and programmes such as these allow us to do exactly that.”