Recommendation 12

Universal Credit has the highest estimated overpayment rate of all measured benefits—9.4% (£1.7 billion) for 2019–20—and it has an estimated underpayment rate of 1.1% (£0.2 billion). This is the highest recorded overpayment rate for any benefit other than Tax Credits (administered by HMRC), which peaked at 9.7% in 2003–04.23 The Department told us that that is it “not happy” with the fraud and error figures for Universal Credit and that it is currently “well off” achieving the fraud and error savings targets in the Universal Credit business case (£1.3 billion a year in steady state).24 Despite its current performance, it reassured us that it is confident it will achieve the business case fraud and error savings in future.25