Whilst the Labour government is fighting a potential rebellion in its ranks due to their proposed benefits cuts, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has released more stats which prove why the benefits cuts aren’t needed – namely, the figures around fraud and error, especially PIP.
DWP releases latest ‘benefit fraud’ figures
The Fraud and Error in the Benefit System report is an annual report that is published every May and provides information on how much is overpaid in benefits each year.
Whilst the government tends to focus on the fraud part of this report, it also breaks down how much was overpaid due to error, on both the part of the claimant and their own error. Not only this, but it also holds the department to account on how much is underpaid to claimants, but this part coincidentally usually receives very little press attention.
The report found that the total amount of overpaid benefits across the whole system from April 2024 to April 2025 was £9.5 billion, or 3.3%. This is actually down from the previous year’s £9.7 billion (3.3%).
The total rate of fraud in the system was 2.2%, or £6.5 billion, but again this is down from the previous financial year’s £7.3 billion (2.7%). The total amount underpaid to claimants was £1.1 billion. Add to this the total amount overpaid due to DWP error that was then taken back was £1 billion. That’s countless pensioners, disabled people, single parents, and working families, unduly stressed and struggling to get by even more because of the government.
What the government are going to focus on is disability benefit fraud, despite it being such a small amount in the grand scheme of the report.
An admission over DWP PIP
It’s difficult to get a complete picture of all fraud and errors in disability benefits, due to Universal Credit now being the main unemployment benefit, and that includes all unemployed people and also those who work but need extra support.
However, the rate of PIP fraud shows just how unserious disability benefit fraud is. In the last year, the rate of total amount of PIP overpayment was 1.3% or £330 million, which is up massively from £90 million in 23/24. However, the breakdown explains why.
The total amount of fraud was £100 million, up from 0 in the last financial year, but this still only accounts for 0.4% of all PIP claimants. The amount of overpayment due to claimant error almost doubles this at £190 million, or 0.7%, compared with £60 million the year before (0.3%).
However, a huge reason for this was that claimants didn’t know they had to report an improvement in health, something which isn’t made clear and considering the DWP backlog, probably isn’t easy to do. That accounted for 6 in every 10 pounds that were overpaid. There was also £40 million overpaid due to the department’s errors.
The amount of underpaid PIP was £40 million (0.2%), compared with £80 million in 2024. Significantly, all underpayments were due to the DWP wrongly deciding claimants should be awarded less.
So whilst there was £100 million in PIP fraud last year, this is also balanced out by the £270 million overpaid due to error and underpaid to claimants due to the government not believing disabled people.
Errors upon errors
Another significant part of the report is that Carer’s Allowance overpayment is included. This hasn’t been reported since 2020, the reason for this of course wasn’t given, but it’s interesting that it wasn’t reported during the pandemic.
The overall overpayment rate of Carer’s allowance was £160 million in the financial year compared with £150 million in 2020. However. despite these figures being higher, as a percentage of the total claims the rate is now much lower than it was in 2020 at 3.9% now and 5.2% in 2020.
There’s no huge significant change in the rate of fraud from 2020 to now, with it standing at 3% (£90 million) in 2020 and 2.5% (£100 million) now. Overpayment due to claimant error is 1% (£40 million), compared with 2.0% (£60 million) in 2020.
It is interesting, though, that the DWP are choosing to publish these figures now – which makes it look like they’ve gotten fraud down since 2020 but not the previous four years.
To compare this to other benefits, Universal Credit had an overpayment rate of 9.7% or £6.35 billion, which was a decrease from the previous year’s 12.4%. Of this £5.20 billion (8%) was down to fraud, down from £5.26 billion (10.8%) the year before.
Claimant error accounted for £610 million (0.9%), and departmental error was £540 million. The underpayment rate increased significantly to £390 million (0.6%) from the previous year’s £180 million (0.3%). Whilst not all on Universal Credit are disabled, this will still have impacted a fair number of disabled people.
DWP: robbing disabled people, robbing older people
And finally, its not just disabled people the government are failing by underpaying, but of course older people too. Whilst the state pension was overpaid by £190 million, it was underpaid by a whopping £450 million. Though this was thankfully paid back, that’s a lot of scared, hungry, and cold older people.
Overall, there hasn’t been a significant change in DWP fraud and error rates since last year, but it’s important that disabled people arm themselves with these stats and the fact that disabled people aren’t the ones robbing the humble taxpayer.
At the end of the day, there’s far more unpaid tax from billionaires that the government fails to chase than there is from people who vitally need support.
Featured image via the Canary
