Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the total number of staff employed to review Personal Independence Payment claims is; and how many fraudulent claims were made in each of the last five years.

DWP currently has 2,700 FTE employed to review Personal Independence Payment Claims.

Notes:

• Data is correct as of 04^th November 2024.
• Data for PIP New Claims and Award Reviews staff has been derived from the Department’s Activity Based Model (ABM).
• ABM FTE (Full Time Equivalent) have been rounded to the nearest 100.
• The number of staff that are employed on PIP New Claims and Award Reviews activity is unpublished management information, collected and intended for internal department use and has not been quality assured to National Statistics or Official Statistics standard. As the Department holds the information, we have released it.

Please refer to table 12 in the following published document which shows levels of fraud and error in the benefits system, including PIP. fraud-and-error-statistics-release-2023-2024-estimates-data-tables.xlsx

The published fraud statistics only provide an estimate of the percentage of PIP cases that are fraudulent. The total number can be calculated by applying that percentage to the total PIP caseload – information can be found at: Personal Independence Payment: Official Statistics to July 2024 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)