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<p> </p><p> </p><p>The Department for Work and Pensions operates a tough series of
specific penalties for benefit fraud that run alongside the criminal justice system.
The Welfare Reform Act 2012 toughened penalties for those who commit, or attempt to
commit benefit fraud. We have introduced a financial administrative penalty as an
alternative to prosecution which, for the first time, can be applied to attempted
fraud.</p><p> </p><p>The Government has also introduced a tougher loss of benefit
penalty to restrict benefits to people convicted of benefit fraud or who have accepted
an administrative penalty. Benefits can be reduced for periods of 13 weeks, 26 weeks
or 3 years, dependent on the number of benefit fraud offences committed within a specified
period, where the latest offence results in a conviction.</p><p>Judges make their
decisions independently of Government based on the facts of each case. The maximum
penalty for fraud is 10 years in prison.</p><p>The number of defendants proceeded
against at magistrates' court found guilty and sentenced at all courts for offences
relating to benefit fraud, with sentencing outcomes and the average custodial sentence
length by gender, in England and Wales, from 2008 to 2012 (latest data available)
can be viewed in the table.</p><p> </p><p>Please note that court proceedings statistics
for the year 2013 are planned to be published by the Ministry of Justice in May 2014.</p>
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