Written question asked by Liam Byrne (Labour) on Monday, 6 February 2012, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 8 February 2012. It was answered by Lord Grayling (Conservative) on Wednesday, 22 February 2012 on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions.

Employment Schemes

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what estimate he has made of the potential cost to the public purse of fraud resulting from the time taken between the commencement of the Work programme and the readiness of its supporting IT system.

Answer: Due to the complexity of the changes required, full IT support for the Work programme payment process will not be available until the end of March 2012. It was therefore necessary to implement a payment process for the 'interim period' (for claims made between September 2011 and March 2012). During this period providers are being paid monthly based on reported outcome claims.We judge that the risk of incurring any additional cost to the public purse as a result of fraud during this interim period is low. Providers have contractual obligation not to claim fraudulently and to make checks against errors. They are also contractually obliged to repay any overpayments.All claims made between September 2011 and March 2012 will be subject to the full validation process and any payments that have been made for claims that fail the validation process will be recovered.

Secondary information