DWP hope for £1.3bn fraud-and-error savings fade with £6bn loss from universal credit overpayments
About a million people claiming universal credit potentially face a “tap on the shoulder” from investigators after official figures revealed record levels of benefit fraud during the first year of the pandemic.
Universal credit accounted for £6bn of the estimated £8.5bn of “overpaid” benefits in 2020-21, the figures show. Fraud levels soared as normal verification checks were suspended in order to process the new benefit claims last spring.
