Recommendation 11

The National Audit Office reported that fraud accounts for around 40% of concerns raised but the central data does not indicate the seriousness of any of the types of concerns raised.22 HMRC and DWP told us that they both have a very small portion of fraud-related whistleblowing cases in proportion to the size and nature of their departments.23 This would indicate these cases relate to concerns raised in other departments. The Cabinet Office could not confirm if these fraud-related cases are truly whistleblowing, as it does not have an understanding of the nature of these cases beyond the ‘fraud’ categorisation in its data collection. The Cabinet Office acknowledged this to be an area that it could follow up on by talking to departments about what information they track, and it could also talk to the Public Sector Fraud Authority about the data that it already collects in this area so that it does not duplicate that.24