Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is taking to reduce phone call waiting times for service users trying to contact her Department's services.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Department prioritises resource to our telephony services according to forecast demand. In periods of unexpected high demand (such as experienced through the pandemic) waiting times may vary while the Department rebalances across services, or secures external resource. The Department also continues to progress automation of services for those citizens able to self-serve to reduce demand and therefore wait times.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps the Government is taking to reduce benefit fraud and deter those seeking to abuse the system.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department has taken huge steps to reduce and minimise fraud and error during the last 16 months – at a time where the Department processed 4.3 million new Universal Credit claims, with the vast majority of benefits paid remaining genuine.
Without the interventions we introduced, the overall Fraud and Error rate would have been notably higher.
Our Integrated Risk and Intelligence Service coordinates the detection of, and response to, fraud risks from organised crime groups seeking to exploit COVID-19. In May 2020, cyber colleagues prevented a large attack on our systems by organised criminals. This prevented substantial sums being paid out to scammers.
We continue to invest in our digital capability and organisational design, with the Chancellor announcing £44m at the Spring Budget for the development of this prevent approach. This funding has enabled us to expand our Integrated Risk and Intelligence Service, develop pre-payment ‘risking’ techniques and maintain our new Enhanced Checking Service for high risk claims.
We are currently revisiting any high risks claims that were paid during the early period of COVID-19.
We take any abuse of taxpayers’ money very seriously. Where fraud does occur, we will investigate it and where fraud is established, we are committed to the use of appropriate penalties and to recovering monies from the perpetrators.
We also continue to work with Other Government Departments and Law Enforcement Agencies nationally and across borders to ensure appropriate intelligence and resources are shared, enabling the totality of any criminality to be identified and investigated.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps the Government is taking to tackle benefit fraud.
Answered by Will Quince
Where fraud is committed, the Department takes its responsibility to investigate it very seriously, and takes appropriate action. There are currently nearly 7,000 staff working in DWP’s Counter Fraud & Compliance Department, and many of these are involved in Investigations and Compliance work.
We are currently undertaking an ambitious recruitment programme which will significantly increase staffing levels by the end of 2021/22, further expanding our counter-fraud capacity.
Where fraud occurs, our Investigators are committed to the use of appropriate penalties and to recovering monies from the perpetrators. To facilitate this, we continue to work with other Government departments and law enforcement agencies nationally and across borders to ensure appropriate intelligence and resources are shared, enabling the totality of any criminality to be identified and investigated.
It is at the same time important that the Department actively prevents fraud from happening, and the Department has optimised its digital capability and organisational design to enable this.
The Chancellor announced £45m at the Spring Budget for the development of this prevent approach. This funding will enable us to expand our Integrated Risk and Intelligence Service (IRIS), develop pre-payment ‘risking’ techniques (Transaction Risking) and maintain our new Enhanced Checking Service, a team which intervenes on high risk claims before they get in to payment.
IRIS has developed a series of rules to help flag up potential risky claims, which allows DWP to undertake additional checks ahead of any payment and thereby prevent people from making fraudulent claims.
Where people seek to use monitor social media platforms to promote ways to bypass normal benefit processes, we work with those platforms to ensure such posts are taken down.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will publish the (a) statutory and (b) non-statutory public inquiries being undertaken by her Department.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The requested information is not available. No information is held because there have been no inquiries that the Department has sponsored.