Commons Sense

House of Commons · Ministers' Questions

Benefits System: Fraud and Error

Monday 28 June 2021 · 2 questions

Summarised by AI from the official record, so it can contain mistakes.

Read the full transcript on Parliament.uk

At a glance

Answered 1 Partly answered 1 Not answered 0

Key points

  • The Department has introduced measures to reduce and minimise fraud and error in the benefits system.
  • The Department aims to resolve issues swiftly and clearly communicate them to individuals.
  • Over 95 percent of benefit payments are paid correctly, with the Department processing over 4.3 million new universal credit claims since March 2020.

Topics (select to filter)

Questions & Answers

Q1 Luke Evans Con Hinckley and Bosworth
Benefits & Welfare
Context

The MP is addressing concerns about fraud and errors within the UK's benefits system, which can lead to significant financial discrepancies for both recipients and the government.

Question

What steps she is taking to tackle fraud and error in the benefits system. The question highlights the need for measures that reduce fraudulent claims while ensuring accurate payments to eligible individuals.

Answer from Will Quince

The Department has taken huge steps to reduce and minimise fraud and error during the last 12 months. We have introduced a range of measures, including optimising digital capability, expanding our integrated risk and intelligence service and policy functions, developing prepayment risking techniques and introducing a prepayment enhanced checking service for high-risk claims.

Answered
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Q2 Luke Evans Con Hinckley and Bosworth
Benefits & Welfare
Context

The MP is focusing on the communication and swift resolution of payment errors in the UK's benefits system, emphasizing that such a large system will inevitably have some level of error.

Question

I am grateful for the Minister's answer. Of course, errors are inevitable in such a large system, be they errors with overpayment or underpayment. Apart from trying to stop that, the key thing is to make sure that they are communicated clearly and resolved swiftly, so what is his Department doing to ensure that this is the case?

Answer from Will Quince

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: we want to see issues resolved as quickly as possible. I would stress that the vast majority—around 95%—of payments are paid correctly, and the Department has processed over 4.3 million new universal credit claims since March 2020. The priority has been to get money to those people who need it desperately as quickly as possible. To do that, we streamlined some of our normal checks, but we are currently revisiting any high-risk claims that we paid during the covid-19 trust and protect period.

Partly answered

Not addressed: The Minister did not provide specific measures or timelines for improving communication and swift resolution of errors in benefit payments beyond acknowledging their importance and current review processes.

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