Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many overpayments of funeral payments her Department recovered in 2015.

We make low-cost funeral expense payments to people who receive (or whose partners receive) a qualifying benefit or Tax Credit. These are recoverable from the estate of the deceased, where possible, but we write most of them off as often there aren’t enough assets in the estate.

Debt Management can also recover any Funeral Expenses Payments that were paid incorrectly; e.g. where a payment was made as a result of a qualifying benefit being claimed incorrectly either as a result of claimant error or fraud.

Whilst DWP does hold data regarding this type of overpayment the numbers are low, less than 15 in total for the period requested.