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<p>The Department for Work and Pensions administers over 25 benefits, ensuring that
the very different conditions of entitlement are met in each individual instance.
We publish annual figures on the amount we estimate has been overpaid under the title
‘Fraud and Error in the Benefit System’.</p><p> </p><p>The percentage of benefit expenditure
estimated to have been overpaid for each of the last 10 years can be found in the
table below.</p><p> </p><table><tbody><tr><td><p><strong>Year</strong></p></td><td><p><strong>Amount
overpaid as a percentage of the Department’s expenditure</strong></p></td></tr><tr><td><p>2009/10</p></td><td><p>2.2%</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>2010/11</p></td><td><p>2.1%</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>2011/12</p></td><td><p>2.1%</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>2012/13</p></td><td><p>2.1%</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>2013/14</p></td><td><p>2.1%</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>2014/15</p></td><td><p>1.8%</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>2015/16</p></td><td><p>1.9%</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>2016/17</p></td><td><p>2.0%</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>2017/18</p></td><td><p>2.2%</p></td></tr><tr><td><p>2018/19</p></td><td><p>2.2%</p></td></tr></tbody></table><p>
</p><p>The Department for Work and Pensions has worked hard to deliver major welfare
reform during much of this period, all whilst limiting fraud and error to 2.2% or
less.</p><p><strong> </strong></p><p>We continue to focus on preventing loss before
it occurs, which is in everyone’s interest. Sophisticated data matching rules are
increasingly allowing us to cross check what claimants tell us, with potential discrepancies
being routed to our fraud investigators.</p><p> </p><p>We are constantly exploring
the use of new data sources, which will improve this process still further.</p>
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