Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent progress her Department has made on tackling benefit overpayments made due to (a) fraud and (b) error.

This government is determined to reduce fraud and error in the social security system. To tackle benefit overpayments, we agreed £8.6bn of savings at the Autumn Budget 2024 – the biggest fraud and error package on record, which led the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to forecast that we will reduce fraud and error to pre-pandemic levels.

On January 22^nd 2025, we introduced the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill which will help the government better identify, prevent and deter public sector fraud and error and enable the better recovery of debt owed to the taxpayer.

As part of the £8.6bn savings, this Bill is estimated to deliver benefits of £1.5bn over the next five years, as scored by the OBR. This is made up of £940 million in savings related to fraud and error overpayments, and £565 million in additional debt recoveries.