Recommendation 19

The National Audit Office’s (NAO’s) work in 2019–20 on the Department’s strategy to tackle fraud and error showed that the Department has a good understanding of the types of fraud and error that occur in the benefit system, but that it needs to do more to understand the cost-effectiveness of individual controls so that it knows that it is doing absolutely everything that it should be doing to counter fraud and error. It also recommended that the Department both risk assess changes to its administrative processes and inform Parliament of those risks.39