Social Security Benefits: Overpayments
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what overpayments of benefits due to Departmental error there were in each of the last five financial years.
Answered by Andrew Western
The Department publishes estimates of the levels of fraud and error in the benefit system by financial year. These statistics for the last five years are available at: Fraud and error in the benefit system - GOV.UK
Below is an extract:
OVERALL LEVELS OF MVFE | |||||
FYE 24 | FYE 23 | FYE 22 | FYE21 | FYE 20 | |
All | 3.7% (£9.7bn) | 3.6% (£8.3bn) | 4.0% (£8.7bn) | 3.9% (£8.2bn) | 2.4% (£4.5bn) |
Fraud | 2.8% (£7.4bn) | 2.7% (£6.3bn) | 3.0% (£6.5bn) | 2.9% (£6.2bn) | 1.4% (£2.7bn) |
Claimant Error | 0.6% (£1.6bn) | 0.6% (£1.4bn) | 0.7% (£1.5bn) | 0.6% (£1.3bn) | 0.6% (£1.1bn) |
Official Error | 0.3% (£0.8bn) | 0.3% (£0.7bn) | 0.3% (£0.7bn) | 0.4% (£0.8bn) | 0.4% (£0.7bn) |
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