Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many employees in her Department investigate benefit fraud: what recent estimate she has made of the cost to the public purse of that fraud; and if she will make a statement.

As of the end of December 2019, the equivalent of around 1,400 full time staff were working as fraud investigators.

In 2018/19 the total value of benefit overpaid as a result of fraud was £2.3bn. This accounts for 1.2% of benefit expenditure.

The vast majority of benefit expenditure is paid correctly, with front line staff working hard to prevent overpayments from occurring. We are constantly improving our processes and continue to invest in the use of data and analytics to identify fraud and to better target our investigations.

It is important to clarify that any overpayment made as a result of fraud is fully recoverable. Last year, DWP and Local Authorities recovered £1.1bn in benefit debt.