Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many fraud investigations conducted by his Department are ongoing.

In the 2022/23 reporting year it took on average 235 working days for the DWP to complete a benefit fraud investigation.

These investigations vary significantly in their nature and complexity and no set time can be attributed to an individual investigation. Our investigators, working with the Crown Prosecution Service where appropriate, seek to expedite all investigations as quickly as possible to ensure the criminal burden of proof is met.

As of the end of March 2023, the DWP had 18,691 open investigations into alleged benefit fraud recorded on its reporting systems. Not all of these will be fraud and it is right we follow the due process.

Outside of that figure there will be a number of ongoing investigations into serious and organised crime where there may be more than one alleged offender or complicit individuals.

Information on successful appeals relating specifically to decisions made as a result of a fraud investigation are not readily available and to provide them would incur disproportionate cost.