Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what quality assurance processes her Department has in place for the administration of (a) universal credit, (b) jobseekers allowance and (c) employment support allowance.
The Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) Quality Assurance Framework sets out the Department’s quality controls
There are three tiers of assurance within the Framework, with each tier aspiring to report lower levels of error as a means of supporting continuous improvement.
Tier 1 provides an assurance at local centre level and focuses on known areas of highest risk of error or complexity
Tier 2 measures official error and gives an independent assurance of financial accuracy via a review of randomly selected cases.
Tier 3 assurance constitutes a formal review of cases for financial error in relation to fraud, customer error and official error.
These assurances apply to all product lines, including UC, JSA and ESA. Wherever possible, award types identified as being high risk are selected for assurance ahead of any payment being made.
DWP reports Tier 3 assurance via its published Monetary Value of Fraud Error statistics. The latest published version can be found via this link.