Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government when the social security benefits budget last had a clean and unqualified audit report from the NAO.
It is the DWP consolidated resource account (not budget) that is audited each year by NAO.
In his certificate of the 2014/15 accounts the Comptroller and Auditor General stated to the House of Commons that, in his opinion, the Department’s financial statements give a true and fair view of the state of the Department’s and the Departmental Group’s affairs as at 31 March 2015.
The consolidated resource account has been given a qualified regularity opinion in each of the years that it has been audited (since 1999-00) because of the level of fraud and error in certain benefits.
The qualification is due to material amounts of fraud & error in benefit expenditure. In the 14/15 accounts this was estimated at 1.9% of benefit expenditure, the eventual outturn was 1.8%.