The Department for Work and Pensions has been urged to adopt anti-benefit fraud tools used in Australia and France.

The National Audit Office made this recommendation in its International Benchmark of Fraud and Error in Social Security Systems report.

Australia use a central national database for customer records, which holds 23 million customer records. The database has made it possible for the government to run a number of data-matching reviews covering records from various agencies involved in providing benefits.

The NAO also mentioned the identifying number system used in France and the Netherlands to counter fraud, designed to support tracking between agency databases.