The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has trumpeted its supposed triumph in “blocking over £1 billion in incorrect and fraudulent payments” hailing this as part of a broader effort to “protect people from falling into debt.”
But while the government spins this as a success, the announcement is less a cause for celebration and more a sobering reminder of how disastrously broken the welfare system has become.
Rather than demonstrating excellence, this news simply exposes the DWP’s chronic failure to do its job properly in the first place — and its continued reliance on punitive narratives that scapegoat the poorest people for its own systemic failings.
The DWP: fixing a problem of its own making
Let’s be clear: preventing incorrect payments, whether due to fraud or administrative error, is not a shiny new innovation — it’s the DWP’s basic responsibility. That over £1 billion in errors could occur in the first place is a damning indictment of how the department has historically been run. This isn’t some groundbreaking policy triumph; it’s damage control. The figure should raise alarm, not applause. After all, if a system is vulnerable enough to risk hemorrhaging a billion pounds, something is fundamentally rotten — and has been for some time.
But instead of admitting this, the DWP dresses up its basic obligation as if it were an extraordinary feat. The tone of the press release is one of misplaced self-congratulation: a slick public relations exercise designed to distract from years of chaos, mismanagement, and cruelty inflicted on claimants.
The fraud narrative: a convenient distraction
This “achievement” also relies heavily on the department’s ongoing crusade against so-called “benefit fraud,” an issue that has been wildly overstated for political gain.
Fraud is actually miniscule: the DWP itself has acknowledged in the past that the majority of benefit overpayments arise from honest mistakes. These are often made by claimants navigating a labyrinthine system that is neither transparent nor accessible.
Yet, rather than simplifying processes or providing better support, the DWP has invested heavily in surveillance, data-matching technologies, and AI tools to scrutinise claimants with an intensity that borders on dystopian. In doing so, it perpetuates a toxic narrative: that those in need of state support are inherently suspect.
This fuels public resentment, creating division and eroding solidarity — all while doing little to address the root causes of poverty.
Protecting whom, exactly?
The department’s claim that blocking incorrect payments “protects people from falling into debt” is especially galling. If the DWP were genuinely concerned about preventing debt, it would be addressing the:
- Draconian sanctions regime.
- Five-week wait for Universal Credit.
- Woefully inadequate benefits levels that force many into rent arrears, food banks, and payday loans.
In reality, overpayments are most often discovered after the fact, leading to the clawing back of funds from individuals already struggling to survive. These so-called “debts” — often the result of bureaucratic delay or miscommunication — are ruthlessly pursued by the DWP. It ends up pushing claimants deeper into precarity.
There is no meaningful effort to assess the impact of these repayments on people’s mental health, family stability, or basic well-being.
The idea that this initiative is a protective measure is not just misleading — it is grotesque.
A record of harm, not help, at the DWP
If the DWP is to be judged on its record, then its litany of failures speaks for itself.
From the botched rollout of Universal Credit to countless reports of benefits being stopped for arbitrary reasons, and thousands upon thousands of claimants deaths on its watch – the department has presided over a decades of austerity-driven reforms that have inflicted untold misery on the most vulnerable.
It has overseen systems that disproportionately harm disabled people, single parents, and those with fluctuating health conditions. It has criminalised poverty. And it has treated claimants with suspicion rather than dignity.
For example, just on Monday 2 June a coroner ruled that the DWP had a direct hand in disabled woman Jodey Whiting taking her own life – after the department stopped her benefits.
Yet now it expects credit for finally plugging leaks it allowed to fester for years? This is not progress. This is spin.
The bar is on the floor
Ultimately, this announcement reveals the depressingly low standards to which the DWP holds itself. Blocking overpayments should never be headline news. It should be the baseline. If a fire brigade proudly declared it had remembered to bring water to a fire, we would rightly question what they’ve been doing until now.
Instead of patting itself on the back, the DWP should be apologising for its past negligence. It should be auditing its punitive practices. And it should be rethinking a system that prioritises cost-cutting over care.
Until that happens, no amount of press releases can obscure the fact that the DWP remains a vehicle for economic punishment and systemic abuse – not social support.
And no amount of “£1 billion saved” headlines will make up for the human cost it continues to ignore.
Featured image via the Canary
