Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of claimants who were given a negative decision following the suspension of their claim by the Risk Review Team or Enhanced Review Team (a) appealed that decision and (b) had a tribunal allow their appeal in each of the last five years.

The Risk Review Team (RRT) has now been incorporated in to a broader and wide-ranging Enhanced Review Team (ERT), aimed at identifying and stopping fraud early.

As the NAO have reported in the Annual Report and Accounts 2022-23. ‘The majority of 2022-23 savings (£650 million) came from the Enhanced Review Team (ERT), which provides a rapid response service for detailed checking of high-risk Universal Credit claims before they go into payment. These estimates also suggest that preventative actions have a much higher level of return than investigating fraud and error after it has occurred.’

Data on how many and what proportion of cases handled by ERT have resulted in suspension is not available to this level for ERT and to produce it would incur disproportionate costs. This is due to large volumes of data being held across different clerical platforms, which would need to be forensically examined.

Likewise, data on cases closed, reinstated, or remaining suspended, cannot be provided within reasonable costs.

We are unable to provide the number of claimants who have appealed decisions on cases closed following RRT/ERT action and the number who have been successful in their appeals over the last five years because ERT only started completing reviews in April 2020.

We are unable to give per year figures since the formation of ERT due to the lengthy dispute process and are also unable to identify which appeals would have previously been suspended, due to this data not being held. However, the cumulative total of cases for RRT and ERT that have been through the dispute process are:

• Appealed to date - 1118
• Outcome in claimant’s favour – 228