Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of increasing the number of employees working on benefit (a) underpayments and (b) overpayments.

His Majesty’s Treasury allocated DWP £110m to deliver on the fraud, error and debt Autumn Budget measures over the next financial year. As part of this, the Department is hiring an additional 3,000 staff to expand DWP’s Fraud, Error and Debt (FED) operations.