Written question asked by James Clappison (Conservative) on Tuesday, 17 July 2007, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 19 July 2007. It was answered by James Plaskitt (Labour) on Monday, 17 September 2007 on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions.

Social Security Benefits: Fraud

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what estimate he has made of the cost of (a) fraud and (b) error in benefit payments administered by his Department in each year since 1997.

Answer

Reliable estimates are not available from 1997-98 to 1999-2000. The available information is in the following table.

Fraud and error in benefit payments
£ billion
	Fraud	Error
2000-01	2.2	1.1
2001-02	2.2	1.2
2002-03	1.8	1.3
2003-04	1.0	1.6
2004-05	0.8	1.7
2005-06	0.7	1.9
Notes: 1. The 2005-06 results in the table were first published as National Statistics in February 2007. However, the forthcoming DWP Resource Account will include a restatement of a previous estimate of 2005-06 overpayments, which will differ slightly from this estimate. The 2005-06 results are also being rebaselined, and an updated version will be published as National Statistics later in 2007. 2. From 2003-04 the methodology for estimating fraud and error changed, and pre 2003-04 estimates are not directly comparable with those since.

Secondary information