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Social Security Benefits: Fraud

Volume 472: debated on Friday 7 March 2008

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how much the Government has spent on the Shop Benefit Fraudsters advertisements. (189833)

The Department for Work and Pensions runs public information campaigns about benefit fraud. These campaigns are not simply about encouraging people to ‘shop benefit fraudsters’, the campaigns are designed to positively reinforce honest behaviour, to create a climate of intolerance to benefit fraud and to undermine its social acceptability. The advertising expenditure for these campaigns is in the following table.

Advertising spend (£000)

2001-02

8,039

2002-03

35

2003-04

8,383

2004-05

6,017

2005-06

7,042

2006-07

5,418

Notes:

1. Figures are for the advertising spend on the Targeting Fraud (2001 to 2002), Targeting Benefit Fraud (2003 to 2006) and Targeting Benefit Thieves (2006 to 2007) campaigns.

2. All figures are exclusive of VAT.

3. The figures in these tables refer to media spend only, excluding production and other costs.

4. All figures have been rounded to the nearest thousand.