Taking the Sting out of Public Sector Cuts

by Stopping Fraud and Error

The UK public sector has an opportunity to offset the worst effects of budget cuts by tackling billions of pounds of fraud and error with proven, innovative approaches

The austerity measures sweeping through the UK’s public sector present a challenging paradox to departments and authorities at all levels of government: the only way cuts will be successfully implemented without severely downgrading services is by doing “better for less”. Automation, outsourcing, shared services and other efficiency approaches will all play their part, but two other areas are highlighted by politicians as untapped sources of cost-reduction — fraud and error. For welfare payments alone, these are estimated to be costing the UK taxpayer upwards of £5 billion a year.

In the past, benefits claims have been paid without the time or facility for sufficient upfront checking for erroneous or, indeed, fraudulent claims. Once in the system, fraud and error are much more difficult to eradicate. The approach of identifying anomalies and suspicious patterns by trawling through multiple databases of claims in payment has had only partial success. Not only has it proven slow and expensive, but many people are uncomfortable with the implications for civil liberties. Increasing the complexity of the claims process for benefits and tax is not a workable solution, either. Making claimants jump through ever more tricky hoops to receive their entitlements is likely to result in large numbers of genuine claimants being disenfranchised, as well as introducing more potential for error.

Mark Nicholls is Head of Government Consulting and Andy Fuller is an Associate Director and Fraud Team Leader in Government Consulting at Fujitsu UK & Ireland

Share this page