ABSTRACT
Drawing a distinction when the criminal law might apply is particularly important to avoid accidentally delaying civil action or destroying a criminal case because of actions taken to deal with the civil aspects. The Bribery Act has been slow to get off the ground in every sense of the word. As with Section 2 of the Fraud Act, a common example of this type of fraud in the UK public sector has been around employment applications. The legislation Sections 3 and 4 is primarily aimed at types of fraud that are less prevalent or unlikely to apply in the public sector, advance fee fraud, banking and insurance fraud and breach of trust fraud. The Metropolitan Police itself found the civil courts an effective route as well as a parallel criminal case when pursuing self-employed linguists who had defrauded the police. The main area where the Fraud Act is likely to apply in the public sector is around benefit fraud.
