Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the oral contribution of the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work of 8 July 2019, Official Report, Column 321, if she will provide details of the successful third-party universal credit fraud prosecution.

The Department is committed to the prevention, detection and investigation of benefit fraud. We take this issue very seriously and will continue to use appropriate penalties to deter this fraudulent behaviour.

Turning to the specific case you reference, the defendant was convicted at a Magistrates court on 14 February 2019 for fraudulently obtaining £4,152.86 in Universal Credit Advances.

This prosecution identified that the suspect had hijacked the identities of close family members in order to make fraudulent applications to Universal Credit, via the online application process, enabling fraudulent payments of Universal Credit and Universal Credit Advances.

It was established that the defendant had also impersonated a friend and changed the payment destination of his friend’s Universal Credit payments.