Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much in total his Department has spent on the Enhanced Checking Service since April 2020; and how much in total his Department has recovered in fraudulently claimed welfare benefits as a result of the Enhanced Checking Service.

The Enhanced Checking Service (ECS) was introduced in April 2020 to support Universal Credit colleagues who were observing potentially fraudulent claims from people looking to exploit the easements implemented to support customers during the Covid pandemic.

ECS now operates as part of DWP’s Counter Fraud, Compliance & Debt (CFCD) ‘Disrupt’ function, whose workload is primarily driven by potential threats identified by DWP’s Integrated Risk and Intelligence Service.

ECS costs cannot be separated from the costs of the wider Disrupt teams, which in 2021/22 (the last full year for which data is available) were £19.7 million. This figure includes staffing, management, and training costs.

No cost information is available in relation to the ECS team for the 2020/21 financial year. This is because ECS funding was part of the wider CFCD budget during this period and cannot be meaningfully separated out.

Whilst recovery of benefit overpayments resulting from fraud cannot be attributed to the work of individual teams, I can confirm that in 2021/22, our Disrupt teams actioned 485,000 cases, with an estimated saving of £671 million in potential losses through fraud.