In 2023-24, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) spent £268.5bn on benefit and pension payments. That same year, the National Audit Office (NAO) reported that benefit overpayments by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) were at £9.7bn, their highest ever level in cash terms, with the majority of overpayments accounted for by Universal Credit. The DWP set out its approach to tackling fraud in 2022, with three main areas of activity: investing in counter-fraud professionals and data analytics, creating new legal powers, and working closely with the public and private sectors.
The PAC has examined fraud and error in benefit expenditure extensively. Its January 2025 report on DWP Customer Service and its 2023-24 accounts warned that levels of fraud were unacceptably high, while finding that disability benefits claimants were at increased risk of hardship with underpayments also rising. The PAC considered that there was no reason why the DWP’s perception of an increasing propensity for fraud in society must inevitably lead to increasing losses to the taxpayer, and concluded that it is the DWP’s job to improve its defences and ensure benefit claimants receive the right amount of money.
The National Audit Office (NAO) publishes two reports in this area in 2025 – the DWP Report on Accounts 2024-25, which sets out core trends in benefit fraud and error; and a separate study examining the effectiveness of DWP’s approach to tackling benefit overpayments due to fraud and error. Following the NAO’s two reports, the PAC will take evidence from senior DWP officials on topics including progress on reducing overpayments now and in the future, on building trust with claimants, and its use of machine learning to help identify cases of fraud.
If you have evidence on these issues, please submit here by 23:59 on Thursday 20 November 2025.
Please look at the requirements for written evidence submissions and note that the Committee cannot accept material as evidence that is published elsewhere. You can request anonymity or confidentiality when you send evidence, but it is the Committee which decides what information to publish and how. It may treat submissions confidentially, even where you have not requested this.
Please note that the Committee’s inquiry cannot assist with individual cases. If you need help with an individual problem you are having, you may wish to read the information on Parliament’s website about who you can contact with different issues.