Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 2
2
Rejected
The Department risks allowing high levels of fraud and claimants disengaging with its compliance processes...
Recommendation
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
Government Response Summary
The government disagrees, stating that there is a well-established methodology for dealing with customers who do not co-operate with the benefit review process and should not be receiving benefit. They also state that they continually review all of its customer letters to ensure they are consistent, understandable, and clear.
Government Response
Rejected
HM Government
Rejected
The government disagrees with the Committee’s recommendation. There is a well-established and accepted methodology for dealing with customers who do not co-operate with the benefit review process and should not be receiving benefit. These customer’s claims are classed as customer fraud, for fraud and error measurement and reporting purposes. The department continues to gain further understanding of these customers, their circumstances, their behaviours and how they came to be in receipt of benefits in the first place. The department does not expect to find a different outcome than customer fraud but wants to understand better how it might change benefit policy, process, or service design to prevent this type of customer fraud in the future. With regards to communications, the department continually reviews all of its customer letters to ensure they are consistent, understandable, and clear. This work is led by communication professionals. Customer letters relating to the sampling exercise are subject to the same approach and seek to strike the right balance between encouraging compliance with the process but also the ability to deal with customer fraud if it is uncovered.