protecting taxpayers’ money

Cracking down on the fraudsters

Published:

AN ANTI-FRAUD initiative that has uncovered almost £10million in scams and mistakes is a welcome step on the road to reforming public bodies and ensuring taxpayers’ money is being spent properly.

Overall, the figure is a drop in the vast ocean of government spending, but the incidents uncovered, many of them clearly crimes, make disturbing reading.

Some are mistakes by those in receipt of the money or by the administrators charged with handling the transactions.

Others, however, are audacious attempts to defraud the public purse.

Prosecutors are looking at 49 housing benefit frauds; 17 employees have been sacked, and around £3.9million has been wrongly paid out to pensioners.

This is the second time the spending watchdog, Audit Scotland, has carried out a fraud initiative and it should become a regular part of life for public bodies until the culture of cheating, no matter how small, is stamped out.

The task of administering millions of benefit claims, pensions and grants across Scotland is an immense undertaking.

The potential for mistakes is huge, but so it appears is the ability to milk the system for cash.

It is up to managers in the various agencies involved to reform their organisations to prevent fraud and root it out when uncovered.

While the success of the operation is to be welcomed, it is hard to escape the feeling that £10million might just be the tip of a very large iceberg.