Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is taking to reduce the level of fraud and error in the welfare system.

The Fraud Plan, Fighting Fraud in the Welfare System published 19 May 2022, sets out our plans for reducing the level of fraud and error in the welfare system by:

• Investing in DWPs frontline counter-fraud professionals and data analytics, including recruiting 2,000 trained specialists to review over two million Universal Credit cases.
• Creating new legal powers to investigate potential fraud and punish fraudsters (subject to legislation).
• Bringing together the full force of public and private sectors to keep one step ahead.

The full document can be found on Welcome to GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

It sets out how we will invest £613m over the next three years in our frontline counter-fraud professionals and establish a brand-new team of trained specialists to conduct Targeted Case Reviews of Universal Credit claims, which will see us review 2 million cases over the next 5 years. This money represents a 75% increase in funding to combat fraud and error, taking our resourcing to £1.4bn over the next three years.

We estimate this investment will stop £2.0bn of loss in fraud and error during this time.