Extraordinary tales of fraud and failure in Whitehall Another joint investigation by Whitehall and the private sector into potentially dodgy National Insurance numbers uncovered 70,000 fraudulent insurance claims - over half of them false personal injury claims. Not all fraudsters are members of the public. The report talks of "insider-enabled" cheating and of "the diversion of public funds into staff bank accounts," though the Cabinet Office says there is no indication that insider fraud is prevalent. Nor is it only the poor who cheat. One exercise uncovered £10 million in unpaid tax by dentists and doctors and has led to criminal investigations and a further £2 million in tax being collected. Yet this is small-scale stuff. One insider described the Cabinet Office as "ringmastering" Whitehall's fight against fraud, but it is all too clear that nobody at the centre has a grip on the rest of the circus. The plethora of anti-fraud quangos, committees, bureaux, initiatives and "tools" (don't ask) is mind-blowing and must gladden the hearts of fraudsters everywhere. There's the Intelligence Sharing Roadmap and its accompanying Intelligence Sharing Architecture. There's the Counter Fraud Champions Network, which is to be expanded into the Fraud, Error and Debt Champions Network in May (no, seriously). Then there's the Single Fraud Investigation Service - SFIS - plus the Integrated Risk and Intelligence Service - IRIS - and let us not forget the Fraud and Error Assessment System Tool, known as FEAST. Despite all these bodies, the sums being reclaimed so far are tiny - £50 million through screening on tax credits, for example. There are promises of much bigger savings, but they are all in the future. HMRC, for example, has been given more than £900 million to tackle the loss of tax revenues through evasion, criminal attacks and the hidden economy. The aim is that this counter-fraud drive should save up to £4 billion a year by 2014/15. Meanwhile, there are rather vague promises about fraud and error being "designed out" of major government projects and programmes, using panels of independent experts. There are also plans to make all officials take one-hour "fraud awareness e-learning" courses. Oh, and Whitehall is finally going to tighten up its vetting procedures for officials. The report reveals that, up to now, there have been no checks on whether staff have previous convictions for fraud. Some of the work now under way gives cause for hope - in particular the use of IT to cross-check data with outfits such as the Credit Reference Agency. Most important of all, the battle is being waged across the whole of government. Yet Whitehall urgently needs to slim down the number of bodies tackling fraud and error, streamline its efforts and ensure that every department keeps a constant watching brief on fraud and on unnecessary mistakes. It is fair enough for the Coalition to attack Labour for the "billions wasted through fraud, error and uncollected debt." Yet this should not be a party issue. Questions should also be asked as to why the mandarins did not do more to bring the losses under control before they reached such eye-watering proportions.