Learning the politics of fraud

Timon Molloy, Editor

In July 1998, just over a year after Labour came to power, the Government published a Green Paper entitled, “Beating Fraud is Everyone’s Business – Securing the Future”. It was to be the blueprint for counter-fraud policy in the Department of Social Security and across the public sector as a whole, Frank Field MP, Minister for Welfare Reform at the time, told delegates to last month’s Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) Counter Fraud Conference. Mr Field, an authority on benefit and pension issues, proceeded to offer a considered view on progress in the last four years. One of the strategy document’s key aims was to establish a core of dedicated anti-fraud specialists. While this has proved successful – Mr Field said that more than 4800 fraud investigators had been trained - ironically, he noted, it was an area where the Government had let others take forward the idea and claim the success. An example is the NHS Counter Fraud Service. A second goal was to “design fraud out of the system. However, two recent schemes – Individual Learning Accounts (ILAs) and the Working Families’ Tax Credit (WFTC) – have proved more notable for their clear failures in fraud control.