Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 25
25
Accepted
DWP plans £895 million investment to reduce benefit fraud and error by 2027-28.
Conclusion
DWP set out its plan to tackle benefit fraud following the pandemic in May 2022 in Fighting Fraud in the Welfare System.57 This includes £895 million of additional investment in counter-fraud activities over the Spending Review period covering the three years to March 2025. Details of the plan now published by the NAO show that DWP expects this investment to generate savings of £9.4 billion by 2027–28 by reducing benefit fraud and error.58 We focused our questioning on two elements of DWP’s counter-fraud plan: • A project to review millions of Universal Credit claims; and • Using machine learning to detect fraudulent benefit claims. Reviewing millions of live Universal Credit claims
Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the committee's observations on its counter-fraud plan and states the recommendation is implemented. It commits to developing and refining an experimental metric to report on full Annual Managed Expenditure savings in its 2023-24 Annual Report and Accounts, while clarifying the distinction between forecasts and targets.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
2.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented. 2.2 The department is committed to the continued development and refinement of its experimental metric to report on the full Annual Managed Expenditure (AME) savings associated with all departmental activities and controls. The department will report on this in its Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24. 2.3 It is important to understand the difference between forecasts and targets, the department will be held to account only on the latter.