Fraud has been and will, unfortunately, be one of the main issues that will burden our government, not just because these people are lying about what they are doing or earning but also because of the knock on effect. Fraud prevention has tried many methods in order to scare people who are attempting to commit fraud, for example, there are multiple advertising posters telling those who know of others committing fraud to come forward. This is, as you would expect, not the only method the government and local councils has used in its arsenal of fraud prevention tactics.

One of the most effective techniques has been through the clauses in contracts, for example, if a person does commit fraud then specific contracts such as housing, will be viewed as void. This, when recognised by the reader and signer can be a strong deterrent. A second fraud prevention technique that the local councils and government use is by acting harshly on any and all fraud they find, starting from when they suspect a person by getting surveillance on them and their day to day actions down to the fines.

However, with the limited amount of people the local government holds for fraud prevention, it can be difficult to investigate a large number of crimes. In order to counter this local governments have started to set up networking by partnering up with other local governments in the area to pull local resources. By doing t they can react relatively quickly to any tips they get and also find those who they associate with who may also be committing fraud.

Although fraud does not seem like a big thing to the average person it is, as with most things, the accumulation of multiple people, all doing the same thing is what leads to the problem. In fact statistics shows that tens of millions of pounds are lost each year to the government from people acting fraudulently. This is not just from the simple working on the side whilst collecting benefits; this is also through a range of methods of fraud from people not fully declaring their earnings, getting onto sick when they are in fact not sick, even getting disability when in fact they are able in both mind and body.