Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 32
32
The Department reports that it is able to identify claims impacted by its temporary easements...
Conclusion
The Department reports that it is able to identify claims impacted by its temporary easements to controls, and that therefore it can revisit these claims to raise any resulting over (or under) payments that might have occurred; it reports that it will be starting this work in 2020–21.66 The Department has a record of acting slowly to identify and correct underpayments. NAO’s Investigation into errors in Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) in 2018 showed that the Department underpaid an estimated 70,000 claimants (at the time of reporting) who had transferred to ESA from other benefits; the error related to people who may have been entitled to income-related ESA but were instead only awarded contribution-based ESA, and therefore may have missed out on premium payments. Although the issue started in early 2011, it took until July 2017 for the Department to recognise that it had a legal responsibility to identify the people affected and develop a response.67 As at January 2020, the Department has had to repay £589 million to 112,000 claimants that had been underpaid as a result of this error.68
Government Response
Not Addressed
HM Government
Not Addressed
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: July 2021 3.2 The department accepts that its response to the COVID-19 pandemic has presented an opportunity to evaluate the controls it has in place and assess the impact of those controls in terms of fraud and error prevention. 3.3 During the COVID-19 pandemic, the department has seen a massive increase in demand and paid benefit to an additional three million claimants. Restrictions meant that the department could not routinely see people face to face and carry out its normal checks during this time. 3.4 The department introduced easements (changes to its processes) to ensure that it paid people who needed support during this period. This meant introducing Trust and Protect principles around key areas of verification; namely identity, eligibility and accuracy elements. This meant placing more reliance on claimants’ declarations. However, the department quickly introduced mitigations to strengthen the new process and ensure that sufficient and proportionate checks were in place. Initial forecasts indicate that this significantly reduced the department’s exposure to fraud and error. 3.5 The department is working on separating out the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and potential losses from easements, along with savings from subsequent agreed changes to easements, mitigations and retrospective action. These numbers will be quite distinct from existing fraud and error levels. 3.6 The normal fraud and error sampling exercise (and publication) will set out the levels of fraud and error in Universal Credit. However, the department will in addition set out in the Annual Report and Accounts the impact the pandemic has had on Universal Credit losses.