Department for Work and Pensions: Public Expenditure

(asked on 4th June 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking to eliminate (a) fraud and (b) error from the spending in her Department.


Answered by
Will Quince Portrait
Will Quince
This question was answered on 14th June 2021

DWP takes fraud and error very seriously. Estimates of fraud and error levels in the benefit system in Great Britain in the financial years from 2005/2006 to 2020/2021 are available in the link below.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fraud-and-error-in-the-benefit-system-financial-year-2020-to-2021-estimates

The Department for Work and Pensions is increasingly moving from detecting fraud and error to actively preventing it from happening and has optimised its digital capability and organisational design to enable this. The recent money secured via the Spring Budget will enable the Department to expand the Integrated Risk and Intelligence Service (IRIS), develop pre-payment ‘risking’ techniques (Transaction Risking) and maintain the new Enhanced Checking Service, who intervene on high risk claims before they get in to payment.

Where fraud does enter the benefit system, there are dedicated teams to investigate this. The Department is committed to the use of appropriate penalties and the recovery of monies from the perpetrators, where fraud is established. To support this work, DWP’s Counter Fraud, Compliance and Debt team is undertaking an ambitious recruitment programme which will significantly further expand our counter-fraud capacity.

We will continue to work with other Government departments and law enforcement agencies nationally and across borders to ensure appropriate intelligence and resources are shared, enabling the totality of any criminality to be identified and investigated.

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