1/12/2024 0 Comments Pocket solisWhere errors do occur, we are committed to fixing them as quickly as possible. The report said that while it was difficult for HMRC to cross-check national insurance records with state pension records to determine the correct level of payment, the department must “do more to detect underpayments before they build up and have a significant impact on pensioners and other claimants”.Ī DWP spokesperson said: “Our priority is ensuring everyone receives the financial support they are entitled to, and state pension underpayment rates due to official error remain low at 0.5% of expenditure. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. For more information see our Privacy Policy. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. “The success of this project is dependent on DWP’s ambitious plans to scale up recruitment and productivity of the team reviewing the claims. However, the committee added: “DWP expects most of the savings to come from a £443m project to cleanse the benefit system of incorrect payments by reviewing some 8 million live universal credit cases over the next five years. The committee acknowledged the department’s plan to tackle such fraud and error, commending the DWP for giving further details of its plans, including investing a further £895m in counter-fraud and setting an annual savings target. DWP officials estimate that 18% of universal credit claims, relating to more than 800,000 people, contain an element of fraud. The majority of fraud and error continues to be driven by universal credit, the report said, which was “overpaid by a staggering 12.8% (£5.5bn) in 2022-23”. “While it is good to see benefit fraud and error fall slightly this year, we are yet to see any significant post-pandemic strides made in addressing it,” she said. The committee’s chair, Dame Meg Hillier, said the level of fraud and error in the system remained unacceptably high, and raised the alarm over responses by DWP officials who said they did not expect a return to pre-Covid levels in this area until 2027-28. This represented a fall from £8.6bn in the previous financial year but remained much higher than the £4.4bn in 2019-20. In a wide-ranging critique of the pension and benefits system, the report said the department was presiding over “eye-watering” levels of fraud and errors that added £8.2bn to the benefits bill in 2022-23. Its annual report on the department concluded that the government was leaving thousands of pensioners shortchanged while it failed to fix basic mistakes made over many years when civil servants managing the state pension system had been “asleep at the switch”.
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