<p>Delivery of Public Services</p>

Part of 2. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:07 pm on 27 September 2017.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:07, 27 September 2017

Well, can I just agree with Darren Millar that fraud is corrosive of public trust? It has a direct impact on the resources available to authorities for public services, and very often, at the individual level, fraud is practiced on those people least able to deal with its consequences. So, as a Government, we take fraud very seriously for all those reasons.

On Friday of last week, I was able to address the annual conference of those people who work in the fraud field here in Wales, where there were speakers from outside Wales as well, all of it designed to try to find new and better ways in which fraud in our public services and in other aspects of public life in Wales can be addressed. It’s a challenge, Dirprwy Lywydd. If you were there in that audience and hearing people speak, you would know that fraud is the single fastest growing set of offences across the United Kingdom, and there are always new possibilities. For all the fantastic advantages that the internet and other forms of electronic communication bring, they offer new opportunities up for crime and for fraud as well. So, the Welsh Government has a very direct interest in bearing down on this, on learning the lessons of examples where fraud is uncovered just to make sure that we can block loopholes and make sure that it doesn’t happen again, and in trying to make sure that our workforce, who work so very hard in this area, are fully equipped and kept in touch with developments in other parts of the United Kingdom to help us all in the business of combatting fraud.