Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask His Majesty's Government how much they have recovered from fraudulent benefit claimants in each year since 2021 and what percentage this represents of the total amount of benefit fraud in each year.

The table below shows total volume of overpayment classified as Fraud (i.e. proven by conviction or admission) by financial year.

Data for what percentage this represents of the total amount of benefit fraud is not available because recoveries in a year do not represent recoveries from fraud committed that year.

The figures provided above only include recovery of overpayments from proven fraud, that is where a claimant has been successfully prosecuted or accepted an administrative penalty. Many other overpayments are likely to be fraudulent but have not specifically been designated as either fraud or error and as such are not included here.