Recommendation 7

DWP estimates that it overpaid 12.8% (£5.5 billion) of all Universal Credit payments in 2022–23, which is much higher than any other benefit.10 We challenged DWP to explain why the fall in fraud and error promised in the Universal Credit business case has failed to materialise. DWP told us that where legacy benefit claimants have migrated to Universal Credit, specific types of fraud—including earnings from employment and childcare— have fallen significantly.11 But it acknowledged that there has been a large build-up in what it calls the ‘stock’ of overpaid Universal Credit claims, which it says relate mostly to the pandemic. It added that it expects to address this primarily through Targeted Case Reviews.12 DWP estimates that the overpayment rate is particularly high for claims that started at the beginning of the pandemic - March 2020 to June 2020 - which during 2022– 23 were overpaid by 21.0%.13