Benefit fraud is a crime and undermines public confidence in the benefits system. In 2006-07, the Department for Work and Pensions estimated that it spent some £154 million on tackling fraud, identifying £106 million of overpaid benefit, against total benefit expenditure of £120 billion. The Department estimates that fraud fell from £2 billion in 2001-02 to £800 million in 2006-07, which is 0.6% of benefit expenditure. But the Department must do more to reverse the rise in official and customer error. Estimated error rose from £1 billion in 2001-02 to £1.9 billion in 2006-07. Benefit complexity is believed to be a major cause of error. Increasing the volume of pre-payment checks and encouraging customers to receive benefit payments directly into their bank accounts has prevented some fraud. The Department now works closely with the police, the Serious Organised Crime Agency and local authorities to prevent, identify and act against fraud. But it could make more effective use of its powers and resources. While the Department successfully prosecutes 90 per cent of the cases it takes to court, the Prosecution Division has lost 17 per cent of its staff since 2003. Debt recovery is an essential part of tackling fraud, yet in 2006-07 the Department only recovered £22 million of fraud debt out of a known fraud debt stock of £339 million. The Department has been slow to improve its management information systems, hampering its ability to measure the cost-effectiveness of counter-fraud activities. It has taken from 2003 until February 2008 to roll out a new national management information system, known as FRAIMS, at a cost of £65 million.

This NAO report is a follow up to one issued in the 2002-03 session (HC 393, ISBN 9780102920635), Tackling Benefit Fraud. The report sets out some key facts, including: that the total benefit expenditure is £120 billion; the total number of recipients is 18 million; the total estimated fraud is £0.8 billion. In the 2006-07 period, £154 million was spent on six strategies to reduce fraud, with a Departmental estimate of £106 million of benefit overpayments identified as a result of fraud investigation and compliance activity. Also in the 2006-07 period, the Department recovered £22 million of the total £339 million outstanding fraud debt. Although the NAO has identified that fraud has fallen from an estimated £2 billion in 2001-02 to an estimated £0.8 billion in 2006-07, official error has risen in the same period from £1 billion to £1.9 billion. Tackling fraud is a key priority for the Department for Work and Pensions, and the report examines the main anti-fraud initiatives, recognising that: tackling benefit is inherently difficult; that the UK has levels of social security fraud and error which are similar to those of comparable countries; that the Department has made good progress in tackling fraud, but will find it increasingly difficult to secure further year on year reductions. The NAO has also set out a number of recommendations, including: that the Department's management information on fraud could be improved, with greater communication between the various departmental directorates responsible for counter-fraud work; that a review of the cost effectiveness of the Customer Compliance approach (which deals with lower risk cases of fraud) should be done; that a record of the outcomes of prosecution activities should be taken by case type to provide better Departmental information; that the Department must review recovery of overpayments in fraud cases and consider setting appropriate targets for recovery from customers who have committed fraud.

The Department for Work and Pensions does not yet have enough evidence to demonstrate that its activities to reduce the cost of mistakes by customers have been value for money. Mistakes made by claimants in the information they provide to the Department, termed customer error, are difficult to detect, correct and prevent. The scale of overpayments and underpayments demonstrate a clear imperative for improvement. Mistakes made by customers are difficult for the Department to tackle because they often arise from a change in customers' circumstances, which customers may not realise they have to tell the Department about. Overpayments due to customer error, which are estimated at £1.1 billion in 2009-10, represent a substantial loss to the taxpayer. And underpayments, which were approximately £800 million in 2009-10, can cause hardship for the families affected. The establishment by the Department of the Fraud and Error Council shows a commitment to tackling fraud and error, but there is little evidence that sufficient attention has been paid to reducing losses due to customer mistakes. The Department launched a five year strategy for tackling error in January 2007 but there has been no discernible decrease between 2006-07 and 2009-10 in underpayments and overpayments due to customer error as a percentage of total benefits expenditure. The Department and its agencies do not yet have enough information to target initiatives effectively. Nor is there enough consistently measured data on the costs and benefits of interventions.

This study reviews the role and workings, with their strengths and weaknesses of last-resort income support (LRIS) programs in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. It draws on a combination of household survey and administrative data for a large group of countries and detailed case studies for a smaller number of countries that span the spectrum of the income range in the region. It thus combines the value of wide, comparable multi-country work with that of in-depth, country-specific probing on key themes. The experiences of LRIS programs in Eastern Europe and Central Asia have demonstrated the technical feasibility of highly efficient poverty-targeted programs in the region. The detailed case studies suggest how programs can improve their coverage, control error and fraud and be implemented effectively in decentralized settings. This experience is pertinent to other regions as well, adding to the know-how for poverty targeting programs in middle and low income countries. Perhaps especially importantly, the book shows that means testing can be accomplished in settings with sizeable informal sectors and at reasonable administrative costs. The study also suggests that currently the role of last resort income support programs within the overall social protection systems of the region is often too small and that their eligibility thresholds should be revised and indexed, so that the programs continue to serve a meaningful swath of the low income households in each country. Moreover the programs can be used as the nexus to weave together a variety of income supports and services for low income households.

Contingent on funding being available, a Festschrift will be held in honor of Dr. John Yuille’s career as a Forensic Psychologist. He has become one of the most visible and respected Canadian psychologists worldwide. In light of his upcoming retirement in December 2006, the Festschrift will recognize Dr. Yuille’s achievements in the areas of eyewitness memory research (i.e., pioneering a new research paradigm that grants better validity), investigative interviewing (i.e., the development and use of the Step Wise Interview Protocol), and credibility assessment (i.e., introducing Statement Validity Analysis to North America). New directions for future work will be explored at the workshop. The focus of this Festschrift will be three-fold: 1. International. Dr. Yuille’s work has influenced law enforcement practices and stimulated research in and outside of Canada. The international and multicultural aspects of the work that Dr. Yuille has inspired will be reflected and promoted by this workshop. 2. Interdisciplinary. Dr. Yuille is internationally known as an expert, consultant and trainer to law enforcement. As such, Dr. Yuille’s work has also influenced other disciplines, e.g., the law, social work, oral history. The participants of this Festschrift will gain insight into other professionals’ perspectives and foster potential collaborations on future projects. 3. Emphasis on applied research. A hallmark of Dr. Yuille’s research has been the application of field and archival methods, which made his work directly applicable to forensically relevant contexts. The potential future directions of applied forensic research will be discussed at this Festschrift. The importance of the subject at this time: - A lack of integrative models in the literatures of eyewitness memory and the assessment of truthfulness and deception. Presenters of the Festschrift have recently developed such models and will discuss them at the Festschrift. Publishing these models and their discussions will spark further research to validate or modify them. - New, pioneering field research based on such integrative models has recently been conducted. This book would be one of the first publications of the results.

This comprehensive edited volume contains analysis and explanation of the nature, extent, patterns and causes of over 40 different forms of crime, in each case drawing attention to key contemporary debates and social and criminal justice responses.

This project examines the concept of fraud loss measurement by critiquing existing measurement methodologies, and argues for the mandating of fraud loss measurement by enforced self regulation, the creation of a British Standard of fraud loss measurement, and the establishment of an information exchange matrix to develop best practice.

Tax lost through the hidden economy could be over £2 billion and involve some 2 million people. HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) spent 41 million in 2006-07 on encouraging people and businesses into the formal economy, detecting and imposing sanctions on those operating in the hidden economy, achieving a return/cost ration of 4.5:1. HMRC detects some 30,000 hidden economy cases a year, a detection rate of only around 1.5 per cent, but the amount of tax recovered has increased by 13 per cent in real terms since 2003-04. Areas of risk include: self-employed builders and decorators who often receive cash payments; individuals who trade on the internet; and buy-to-let landlords. To increase detections HMRC is making more use of data matching techniques, and the Tax Evasion hotline received over 120,000 calls in 2006-07, but progress in investigating cases has been slow with only 2000 completed against a target of 5,500. HMRC can impose penalties of up to 100 per cent of tax owed, but usually imposes a lower penalty or waives them. Prosecutions are not given much publicity, limiting their wider deterrent effect. Advertising campaigns to encourage people to declare tax owed have led to 8,300 registrations bringing in extra tax of £38 million over three years. Offshore Disclosure arrangements have been even more successful following landmark rulings requiring financial institutions to release details of around 400,000 offshore accounts. Some 45,000 people came forward bringing in around £400 million at a cost of £6 million, a return of £67 for every £1 spent.

In 2006-07, Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (the Department) raised a total of £23.8 billion in Corporation Tax from large businesses. There are some 700 of these businesses, and in 2005-06, just 50 of them paid 67 per cent of the large business Corporation Tax, whilst 181 businesses paid none. Two-thirds of the tax comes from the banking, oil and gas and insurance sectors. Businesses pay little or no Corporation Tax because, for example, they have made a loss, or had losses in previous years, or they are using tax reliefs, or engaging in tax avoidance. In 2006-07, the Department's large business Corporation Tax enquiry programme raised nearly £2.7 billion. Many of these enquiries were poorly targeted, with nearly 60 per cent producing less than 1 per cent of the additional tax raised. The enquiries also take too long: in January 2008, 42 per cent of its enquiries were over two years old, and 10 per cent over four years old. In February 2007, based on initial review of tax returns from the previous 12 months, the Department estimated that the potential Corporation Tax at risk was £8.5 billion. The tax assessments are very complicated and there has been a widening gap between the skill set of large business tax staff and that of the Large Business Service. The Department is bringing in external recruits, including retired tax advisors, to help to train its staff and to deal with the more complicated technical work.

EU expansion has stoked fears that criminals from the East may abuse freedom of movement to exploit the benefit systems of richer states. This book examines the way in which physical state borders are increasingly being replaced by internal border controls in the form of state bureaucracies as a means of regulating westward migration. The work examines the postmodern effect of globalisation and how ontological anxieties contribute to securitisation and social sorting in Western countries. It discusses the changes in control societies and how targeted surveillance as a geopolitical tool leads to new digitalised mechanisms of population selection. The book presents a casestudy of Roma migrants in the UK to examine the coping strategies adopted by those targeted. The book also critically evaluates the limitations of digitalised bureaucratic systems and the dangers of reliance on virtual data and selection methods.