Recommendation 25

The Department told us that the big fraud and error saving that it knew would come from Universal Credit is using real-time information (RTI) on earnings from HMRC in an automated way to calculate the award, and that it ‘knows’ it is “doing well on the RTI part”. However, the Department accepted that there is “more fraud and error in self-reported earnings than had been anticipated” and it has “more to do on the self-employment part”.50 The Department told us that is has other datasets from HMRC, “because everybody has to make returns”, for claimants with self-employment or self -reported income. However, the Department said that there are time lag issues with this data so it needs to supplement it with data from other sources e.g. different agencies, financial institutions or financial companies that would have information on people.51 The third risk area identified by the Department where further progress is required is ‘living together’ (e.g. where an undeclared partner might be living in a household). It informed us that it is looking at using other types of data matching in this area and reported that IRIS has developed data matching rules to help identify cases where an undeclared partner might be living in a household. Alongside looking for data matching opportunities, it also told us that a lot of work is going into making reporting a change of circumstance easier for capital, living together and self-reported and self-employed earnings.52