Recommendation 28

DWP told us it will take two years for TCR to have a measurable effect.63 We observed that TCR is an expensive intervention and questioned DWP on whether it has been under pressure to deliver the project faster in order to demonstrate a credible return on investment.64 DWP acknowledged that it needs to increase productivity significantly to achieve the expected £6.4 billion of savings by 2027–28, and there is therefore some 57 DWP ARA 2022–23, page 96; Department for Work & Pensions, Fighting Fraud in the Welfare System, CP 679, May 2022 58 DWP ARA 2022–23, pages 296, 297, 304 59 Q 82, DWP ARA 2022–23, pages 107, 305–308 60 Qq 16, 96 61 DWP ARA 2022–23, pages 308, 394 62 Qq 82–83, 91 63 Q 20 64 Qq 88, 92, 97 18 The Department for Work & Pensions Annual Report and Accounts 2022–23 pressure to speed up the pace of reviews. It explained that it does not expect the hit rate of incorrect claims to rise much higher than 30%, and so it expects savings will need to be driven by the volume of cases cleared.65 The NAO has reported that DWP expects newly trained TCR agents to review 0.5 cases per day, ramping up to 2.0 cases per day across all agents by 2027–28.66 DWP noted that it intends to ensure that the quality of reviews is not sacrificed to maximise productivity, so that that learning can be captured from the reviews and fed back into continually improving Universal Credit.67 Using machine learning to flag potentially fraudulent benefit claims