Lie detector beats benefit fraud

A trial of lie-detecting voice recognition technology to combat benefit fraud has saved a council £110,000 - and could lead to a national rollout of the system.

Harrow Council in Greater London has been running the £63,000, year-long pilot of the voice recognition analysis (VRA) system since May to identify potentially fraudulent housing benefit or council tax discount claims.

The VRA system is already used in the insurance industry and works by detecting stress patterns - such as hesitation or changing of answers - in the voice of callers to indicate whether they might be lying.

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So far, the tech saved Harrow Council around £110,000 in benefits payments. It has helped to identify 126 incorrectly awarded single person council tax discounts - worth £40,000 - and prompted 304 claims to be reviewed.

Of these, 47 were found to be no longer valid, meaning the council saved another £70,000 in benefit entitlements.

A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) - which funded the pilot - told silicon.com the department will evaluate the technology when the trial is completed next May.

He said the DWP will "look at the evaluation results and see if it's viable, see if it's something to work on and see if other councils are interested in doing it".

If the benefits are seen as sufficient, the system could potentially be rolled out across the country, although no firm plans are currently in place.

The DWP is arranging for other local authorities to trial the technology in the coming months.

The government estimates benefit fraud cost around £700m in the financial year 2006/07, while Harrow Council alone lost £250,000 through fraudulent claims over the same period.

A Harrow Council statement said local authorities have a duty to catch fraudsters due to the financial restraints they face and the lie detector technology is "another tool to help achieve this goal".