Asked by: Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much and what proportion of fraud and error was (a) prevented upfront and (b) detected after the event in the latest period for which data is available.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Our estimate is that the Department prevented up front £17.1bn of fraud and error and detected £0.6bn after the event in the financial year 2022/23.
Further details can be found in the Annual Report and Accounts 2022/23, link below.
Annual Report and Accounts 2022-23 for the year ended 31 March 2023 (publishing.service.gov.uk)
DWP will update these figures in the Annual Report and Accounts for financial year 23/24, expected to be published in Summer 2024.
Asked by: Alison McGovern (Labour - Wirral South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many Carer’s Allowance cases were flagged as potentially in need of investigation by the VEPs system in the 2023-24 financial year; and of these, how many (a) were and (b) were not investigated.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average value was of Universal Credit claim overpayments in the 2022-2023 financial year.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
DWP measures its overpayments via annual national statistics published each May. However, we do not produce an estimate for the average value of a Universal Credit overpayment.
We estimate that the total value of Universal Credit overpayments in 2022-2023 was £5,540m: Fraud and error in the benefit system: financial year 2022 to 2023 estimates - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department has taken to reduce the costs of error in the last three financial years.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
We are committed to tackling both fraud and error. DWPs quality assurance framework plays an important role in identifying common errors which contribute to over and underpayments. In addition, the department and HMRC has committed to provide assurance this winter over the integrity of the National Insurance records and how they interact with DWP’s benefit system.
The Department launched a robust plan to drive down fraud and error from the benefits system, alongside investment of £900 million that will deliver £2.4 billion of savings by the end of 2024/25. This plan includes proposed powers to require the transfer of data from third-parties, which has been introduced as part of the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill (No.2). This legislation is forecast to save up to an additional £600m over the Treasury scorecard period.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what guidance his Department issues to people placed in Slough by Hillingdon Borough Council who cannot access Household Support Funding because Hillingdon's scheme stipulates that such funding is available to residents of that Borough and Slough Borough Council's scheme stipulates that people placed in Slough temporarily by another borough must apply to their originating borough.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Household Support Fund is an intentionally flexible scheme, designed to enable Local Authorities to deliver a tailored response to local need as they have the ties and knowledge to best determine how this support should be provided.
Local Authorities have the flexibility to design and deliver their Household Support Fund scheme through a variety of routes, including, for example, offering vouchers to households, directly providing food, or issuing grants to third parties. This means that it is for each local council to decide how, where and when they distribute their funding within the parameters of the guidance and grant determination set out for them by the Department for Work and Pensions.
Local Authorities are encouraged through our guidance to work together with neighbouring Authorities to help prevent double provision and/or no provision, especially where the allocation of provision may take place in one area, but the award recipient has a residential address in another.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent discussions he has had with local authorities on ensuring that people who need to access the Household Support Fund are not excluded by variations in eligibility criteria between councils.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Household Support Fund is an intentionally flexible scheme, designed to enable Local Authorities to deliver a tailored response to local need as they have the ties and knowledge to best determine how this support should be provided.
Local Authorities have the flexibility to design and deliver their Household Support Fund scheme through a variety of routes, including, for example, offering vouchers to households, directly providing food, or issuing grants to third parties. This means that it is for each local council to decide how, where and when they distribute their funding within the parameters of the guidance and grant determination set out for them by the Department for Work and Pensions.
Local Authorities are encouraged through our guidance to work together with neighbouring Authorities to help prevent double provision and/or no provision, especially where the allocation of provision may take place in one area, but the award recipient has a residential address in another.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking with local authorities to ensure that people in need of access to the Household Support Fund are not stopped from accessing it by differences in the criteria used by local authorities.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Household Support Fund is an intentionally flexible scheme, designed to enable Local Authorities to deliver a tailored response to local need as they have the ties and knowledge to best determine how this support should be provided.
Local Authorities have the flexibility to design and deliver their Household Support Fund scheme through a variety of routes, including, for example, offering vouchers to households, directly providing food, or issuing grants to third parties. This means that it is for each local council to decide how, where and when they distribute their funding within the parameters of the guidance and grant determination set out for them by the Department for Work and Pensions.
Local Authorities are encouraged through our guidance to work together with neighbouring Authorities to help prevent double provision and/or no provision, especially where the allocation of provision may take place in one area, but the award recipient has a residential address in another.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what options are available to those people who have been placed in temporary accommodation in a different Council area and therefore do not meet either Councils' criteria for accessing the Household Support Fund.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Household Support Fund is an intentionally flexible scheme, designed to enable Local Authorities to deliver a tailored response to local need as they have the ties and knowledge to best determine how this support should be provided.
Local Authorities have the flexibility to design and deliver their Household Support Fund scheme through a variety of routes, including, for example, offering vouchers to households, directly providing food, or issuing grants to third parties. This means that it is for each local council to decide how, where and when they distribute their funding within the parameters of the guidance and grant determination set out for them by the Department for Work and Pensions.
Local Authorities are encouraged through our guidance to work together with neighbouring Authorities to help prevent double provision and/or no provision, especially where the allocation of provision may take place in one area, but the award recipient has a residential address in another.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of the different criteria used by local authorities for the Household Support Fund on people being placed outside their local authority.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Household Support Fund is an intentionally flexible scheme, designed to enable Local Authorities to deliver a tailored response to local need as they have the ties and knowledge to best determine how this support should be provided.
Local Authorities have the flexibility to design and deliver their Household Support Fund scheme through a variety of routes, including, for example, offering vouchers to households, directly providing food, or issuing grants to third parties. This means that it is for each local council to decide how, where and when they distribute their funding within the parameters of the guidance and grant determination set out for them by the Department for Work and Pensions.
Local Authorities are encouraged through our guidance to work together with neighbouring Authorities to help prevent double provision and/or no provision, especially where the allocation of provision may take place in one area, but the award recipient has a residential address in another.
Asked by: Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people were underpaid the State Pension due to incorrectly updated National Insurance records in the 2022-23 financial year; and what the total amount is that these people are owed.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
This response covers both missing Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) and UC National Insurance issues.
The exercise to correct National Insurance records for those individuals impacted by errors in their HRP record is underway. The HRP corrections exercise started with HMRC dispatching letters in late 2023. Cases subsequently notified from HMRC started being processed in DWP in early 2024.
In the Department’s Annual Report and Accounts 2022-2023, the central estimate was around 187,000 cases who may have an underpayment of State Pension and for whom we expect to correct, with a total underpayment estimate of £1,043 million.
We intend to publish an update on the exercise in this year’s Annual Report and Accounts.
DWP has corrected the UC data issue for the cases impacted for the tax years up to and including the tax year 2022/2023. This data has been shared with HMRC. As HMRC updates NI records, these updates are sent to DWP. Any State Pension entitlement will be reassessed, and any underpayment addressed accordingly.