UK Inquiry Tracker

Department for Work and Pensions Accounts 2021-22

Public Accounts Committee Closed Inquiry

Opened: 9 Jun 2022 Closed: 24 Feb 2023 Parliament page

The Committee will question senior officials at the Department for Work and Pensions on how they managed benefits and employment support in the second year of the pandemic – including current levels of fraud and error in benefits payments - and ongoing efforts to address major delivery issues like the … Read more

15 Recommendations

16 Conclusions

1 Report

1 Oral session

1 Event

Activity timeline 3 events

24 Feb
2023

Report published

Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Twenty sixth report from Session 2022-23

9 Nov
2022

Report published

Twenty-Sixth Report - The Department for Work and Pensions’ Accounts 2021–22 – Fraud and error in the benefits system

20 Jul
2022

Oral evidence

Department for Work and Pensions Accounts 2021-22

Oral evidence sessions 1 session

20 Jul 2022

View on parliament.uk

Department for Work and Pensions Accounts 2021-22

Bozena Hillyer · Department for Work and Pensions Elizabeth Fairburn · Department for Work & Pensions Neil Couling CBE · Department of Work and Pensions Peter Schofield · Department for Work and Pensions

Reports 1 report · click to expand

Title	HC No.	Published	Items	Response
Twenty-Sixth Report - The Department for Work and Pensions’ Acco…	HC 44	9 Nov 2022	31	Response document linked

Recommendations & Conclusions

31 results

2 Recommendation

Twenty-Sixth Report - The Departme…

The Department risks allowing high levels of fraud and claimants disengaging with its compliance processes...

The Department risks allowing high levels of fraud and claimants disengaging with its compliance processes to become normal. The Department has repeatedly claimed that there is an increasing propensity to fraud in society in general since the pandemic. It believes … Read more The Department risks allowing high levels of fraud and claimants disengaging with its compliance processes to become normal. The Department has repeatedly claimed that there is an increasing propensity to fraud in society in general since the pandemic. It believes that this is in part driving the record levels of fraud and error in the benefit system. However, it is unable to point to convincing evidence that increasing fraud in society must lead to increasing losses to the taxpayer. The Department does not fully understand the reasons why fraud and error in benefit payments remain at record levels. We are therefore concerned that the Department’s narrative about fraud in society could encourage a complacent attitude toward unprecedented and unacceptable levels of benefit fraud and that people come to see committing benefit fraud as normal. We are also concerned about the sharp increase in the number of claimants choosing not to engage with the Department’s sampling exercise to measure fraud and error. These claimants accounted for 14.4% (£852 million) of all Universal Credit overpayments in 2021–22, an increase of £328 million compared with 2020–21. The Department assumes that all such claims are fraudulent but admits that it has no statistically significant information to support this view. It is therefore unable to say whether claimants who fail to engage have done so because they are fraudsters or have been unwilling or unable to engage for other 6 The Department for Work and Pensions’ Accounts 2021–22 – Fraud and error in the benefits system reasons. Given this uncertainty, the Department should do more to reassure itself that it has struck the right tone in its communications with claimants to encourage trust and engagement with its services. Recommendation: Before the end of January 2023, we expect the Department to write to us with a clear plan of how it intends to increase the number of claimants responding to its fraud and error sampling exercises. In doin Show less

HM Treasury

Department for Work and Pensions Accounts 2021-22

Activity timeline 3 events

Oral evidence sessions 1 session

Reports 1 report · click to expand

Recommendations & Conclusions

The Department risks allowing high levels of fraud and claimants disengaging with its compliance processes...

The success of the Department’s strategy to bring down fraud and error is dependent on...

The Department has not set out in sufficient detail how it will assess whether it...

The Department’s lack of transparency over its use of data analytics risks eroding public trust...

The Department’s efforts to correct the systemic underpayment of State Pension are too slow to...

On the basis of a Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG), we took...

We challenged the Department to explain why benefit fraud remained so high and had not...

We have repeatedly recommended that the Department should set targets for fraud and error reduction...

We asked the Department when it expected to be able to set a target for...

The Department has repeatedly linked the high level of benefit fraud since the pandemic to...

The Department’s fraud and error statistics show that the biggest growth area for Universal Credit...

We asked the Department whether it had considered explanations for failure to engage other than...

We asked the Department how it ensured that vulnerable claimants were taken into account, in...

We observed that some claimants may struggle to understand the Department’s communications and use its...

In May 2022 the Department published its strategy to reduce fraud and error following the...

We questioned the Department on the challenges it may face in implementing its strategy.

We have previously recommended that the Department should communicate to Parliament what additional powers or...

During our examination of the Department’s 2020–21 Annual Report and Accounts we concluded that the...

We have previously found that the Department lacks the ability to demonstrate that its counter-fraud...

We asked the Department how long it would be before it could set a target...

The Department told us it had included numbers in its Annual Report and Accounts for...

As part of our previous examination of the Department’s 2019–20 Accounts, we recommended that the...

We asked the Department about the degree of transparency that the public can expect to...

The Department explained that, in order to manage the risk of unintended bias in the...

We examined the Department’s systemic underpayment of State Pension in January

By the publication of its Annual Report & Accounts in July 2022 the Department estimated...

In January 2021 the Department launched an exercise to review around 400,000 cases ‘at risk’...

In our January 2022 report we were concerned that the Department had not given people...

In our January 2022 report, we warned that, given the nature of underpayments identified, there...

The NAO reported that the Department cannot rule out that there may be further groups...

We have previously concluded that the Department had been relying on a State Pension payment...