Specialist squad helps Government prevent fraud in public services

The new service will provide expert advice and support to help departments and public bodies alike in better understanding how fraudsters attack Government schemes and services and take action to make those attacks less likely to succeed.

It will deploy teams of experts into critical points, such as when the Government announces new spending programmes or policies, in order to scrutinise and improve oversight of spending before funds are issued. This will ensure that fraudsters cannot profit from the public purse.

The team is made up of counter-fraud experts, who have had specialist training and are experienced in preventing and detecting fraud. They will help services harness the latest tools and techniques, including by the adoption of a fraudster’s mindset to stress test fraud controls and strengthen the Government’s fraud defences.

Rigorous identification

Cabinet Office Minister Baroness Neville-Rolfe said: “We know that fraudsters, both here in the UK and overseas, are targeting public funds. That being so, we must do everything we can to stop them. The public expects us to protect taxpayers’ money and this new service steps up the Government’s fraud defences through more rigorous identification of the threats we face and specialist support for public services.”

The Risk, Threat and Prevention Service is a global first, with no other Government in the world currently providing such a cross-Government resource and capability to identify and counter fraud.

Going forward, it will develop new tools for Government to use, including the Global Fraud Risk Assessment, which will track and analyse common fraud patterns so that teams can ensure services are designed in a way which doesn’t leave them exposed to fraud.

The team will also develop a High Fraud Risk Portfolio, which will identify those areas of the public sector most at risk of fraud. This will enable departments to better prioritise the allocation of counter-fraud resources and expert advice so that fraud risks are mitigated more efficiently.

These new tools will allow the Government to better target counter-fraud resource. The Risk, Threat and Prevention Service will lead fraud squads, which will surge into departments in order to analyse and design services which are far less open to the risk of fraud.

This early intervention will help to ‘design out’ fraud at the early stages of a new Government service or policy starting, thereby preventing the need for investigators to have to try and recoup money in the future. The savings delivered by the new team will help to deliver on the Prime Minister’s commitment to growing the economy by reducing public money lost to fraud and ensuring funding reaches those services for which it’s intended.

Complex and pervasive

The Risk, Threat and Prevention Service has been built over the past eight months. The Government recently appointed Mark Cheeseman OBE, an internationally recognised expert, as the Public Sector Fraud Authority’s first CEO.

Cheeseman observed: “Across the world, fraud is becoming more complex and pervasive, but we know that the investment in understanding and preventing fraud pays off. The creation of the new Risk, Threat and Prevention Service, a first for the Government, will help us to continue innovating and improving across the system aimed at finding, fighting and stopping fraud.”

Government has invested £1 billion in taking action against public sector fraud in this spend review period and has recovered more than £3.1 billion of fraud losses in the last two years, including within COVID-19 schemes.

Significant progress has been made by establishing the Public Sector Fraud Authority, which is stepping up the Government’s efforts to protect taxpayers’ money. Government continues to expand its Counter Fraud Profession, develop new technologies and boost skills and training in a determined bid to further protect the public purse.