Kiwiblog: Labour soft on fraud?

David Farrar has a post regarding an exchange David Shearer had with a constituent about a neighbour being on a sickness benefit while he was up painting his roof. Shearer empathises with the constituent about the unfairness of the situation. Then Farrar points out the hypocrisy of this as Labour has opposed every National reform measure to reduce fraud. The implication is that Labour is soft on benefit fraud.

The statistics don't support this however.


table IS.1: Fraud and abuse investigations and reviews completed, and overpayments identified¹

Financial year2	Number of investigations and reviews completed	Number of overpayments established	Value of overpayments ($)
2006/2007	39,141	7,084	41,935,634
2007/2008	26,736	4,407	33,702,275
2008/2009	26,400	3,327	33,780,453
2009/2010	19,935	2,996	39,336,133
2010/2011	16,266	2,424	39,838,760

table IS.2: Fraud prosecutions completed

Financial year1	Number of prosecution cases of benefit fraud completed
2007/2008	1,028
2008/2009	735
2009/2010	789
2010/2011	690