Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what mechanisms are in place to prevent incorrect payments being made.

The Department takes every care to prevent incorrect payments being made and to ensure that benefits are paid to the correct recipient; we are focused on paying people their correct entitlement from the outset of a claim.

The Department has a clear strategy for tackling fraud, error and debt in the benefits system, which increasingly focuses on the prevention of fraud and error.

Various mechanisms help ensure that monies are paid to the right people. These include the verification of claimants’ information, clear customer communications to ensure benefit claimants provide full and correct claim details and a robust quality checking regime. This Quality Assurance approach includes pre-payment checks on a selection of claims. Outcomes from these and other checks inform on-going training and help prevent the repetition of errors.

The Department continues to make use of its digital capability, including the use of real time information and other data, which helps identify any potential discrepancies in claims.

The Department’s latest estimates of Fraud and Error in the Benefits system were published on 14^th May 2020 and show that estimated losses from official error in 2019/20 accounted for 0.4% of total benefit expenditure.

These statistics can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fraud-and-error-in-the-benefit-system-financial-year-2019-to-2020-estimates