Social Security Benefits: Fraud and Maladministration
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the Budget 2025, what measures his Department will take to reduce error and fraud in the welfare system by £4.6 billion by 2030-31.
Answered by Andrew Western
Since Autumn Budget 2024, including the new announcements at Autumn Budget 2025, the Government has committed to gross savings of £14.6bn up to the end of 2030/31 from fraud, error and debt activity in GB. These activities include:
- introducing regular requests for Universal Credit claimants to confirm whether any of their circumstances have changed, £1.2bn
- improvements to the verification of self-employment income and expenses and of capital in claimants’ bank accounts to prevent fraud and error entering the Universal Credit benefit system, £0.9bn
- investment to deploy up to 3,000 additional staff and strengthen our data, analytics and investigative capability, £3.0bn
- continuing Targeted Case Reviews to check accuracy of Universal Credit claims at risk of being incorrect, £6.6bn including £1.2bn in Autumn Budget 25. Since its inception, TCR has committed to delivering £17.3 billion AME savings by March 2031.
- providing additional resource to action data alerts to detect and correct under- and over-payments, £0.2bn
- introducing legislation to require banks and other financial institutions to share data with DWP to help identify any potential overpayments, £1.2bn
- introducing legislation to allow DWP to recover debts from those no longer on benefit or in PAYE employment, £0.9bn (PSNCR - Public Sector Net Cash Requirement)
- introducing reviews of Pension Credit claims that are at risk of being incorrect, starting from 2026 and ending in 2029, £0.5bn.
Figures may not sum due to rounding.
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