Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to his Department's statistics entitled Fraud and error in the benefit system, Financial Year Ending (FYE) 2024, published on 16 May 2024, how much of the £7.4 billion overpayment due to fraud is due to serious and organised crime.

The Department uses the definition as set out by the Home Office - ‘’ We define serious and organised crime as individuals planning, co-ordinating and committing serious offences, whether individually, in groups and/or as part of transnational networks’’.

The Department has a strong counter-fraud function, which includes specifically targeting serious and organised crime including cyber-crime, which identifies and stops illegal activity and saves money for the taxpayer.

Current estimates are that serious and organised crime directly accounts for no more than 6% of the £7.4 billion of benefit fraud reported in the 2023/24 statistics, as it is most likely captured in the Abroad and Conditions of Entitlement (Identity) categories of fraud reported there.