At an event bringing together member states of the international Five Eyes intelligence collective, ministers saluted the impact of new technology in enabling Whitehall to achieve record savings last year
The government stopped £480m from ending up in the pockets of fraudsters in 2024/25, which the Cabinet Office claims is a record amount of savings.
The Cabinet Office said the savings, driven by the Public Sector Fraud Authority, were around £110m bigger than the year before and amount to the government’s “biggest ever fraud crackdown”.
Announcing the figure at an anti-fraud Five Eyes summit in London last week, Cabinet Office minister Josh Simons said that efforts to tackle criminals have been enabled by “cutting-edge AI and data tools to stay one step ahead of fraudsters, making sure public funds are protected and used to deliver public services for those who need them most – not line the pockets of scammers and swindlers”.
The minister also used the summit to unveiled a new AI fraud prevention tool that has been built by the government and which will be used across all departments following successful tests.
The tech-powered system scans new policies and procedures for weaknesses before they can be exploited, with the aim of making new policies fraud-proof during the drafting process. The Cabinet Office said the tool could be essential in stopping fraudsters from taking advantage of government efforts to help people in need amid future emergencies.
The UK will also licence the technology internationally, and the Cabinet Office said Five Eyes partners at the summit are considering adoption as part of strengthening global efforts to stop fraud.
In this country, it is hoped to “prevent the scale of criminality seen through the Covid pandemic, where millions were lost to people falsely taking advantage of furlough, Covid Grants and Bounce Back Loans”.
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More than a third of the money saved during 2024/25 (£186m) came from identifying and recovering fraud committed during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Cabinet Office said government efforts have blocked hundreds of thousands of companies with outstanding or potentially fraudulent Bounce Back Loans from dissolving before they would have to pay anything back, and clawed back millions of pounds from companies that took out Covid loans they were not entitled to, or that took out multiple loans when only entitled to one.
The government last year appointed a covid corruption commissioner to help investigate fraud from Covid support schemes such as the Small Business Grant Fund, furlough and “Eat out to help out”.
Alongside Covid fraud, the savings include clamping down on people unlawfully claiming single persons council tax discount, and removing people from social housing waitlists who wanted to illegally sublet their discounted homes.
The government has also saved more than £68m by preventing wrongful pension payments across major public sector pension schemes, including the Civil Service Pension Scheme, by identifying cases where pension payments continued after the individual had died, often with relatives continuing to claim benefits they were not entitled to.
The Cabinet Office said results from early tests show it could save thousands of hours and help prevent millions in potential losses, slashing the time taken to identify fraud risks by 80% while preserving human oversight.
Simons added: “Working people expect their taxes to go towards schools, hospitals, roads and the services they and their families use. That money going into the hands of fraudsters is a betrayal of their hard work and the system of paying your fair share. It has to stop. That’s why this government has delivered the toughest ever crackdown on fraud, protecting almost half a billion pounds in under 12 months.”
The Five Eyes alliance – which, alongside the UK, features the US, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada – was first established during World War Two. Since then, the member nations have cooperated on sharing signals intelligence.
