To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the oral evidence
to the Work and Pensions Committee of the Change Director General and Senior Responsible
Owner for universal credit, on 24 November 2021, Q34, HC728, how many cases of the
90,000 estimated as not correct have been identified through reverification as not
correct; and in how many of those cases has mandatory reconsideration been applied
for.
<p>In March 2020 the Department introduced a temporary verification easement to Universal
Credit claims to support people during the height of the pandemic. This easement meant
the Department successfully paid an additional 2.4 million claims during the early
months of the pandemic.</p><p> </p><p>We reported last year on how we were reviewing
cases paid under these temporary verification easements, known as “Trust and Protect”,
and were re-applying these specific checks. The number of cases where evidence has
been reviewed under this process has now risen from the figure of 900,000 previously
reported to 1.1 million.</p><p> </p><p>Of that number, 125,000 cases have been found
to have an element of incorrectness that has affected the original entitlement decision.
Decisions made as a result of this exercise have generated c14,500 (12%) Mandatory
Reconsideration requests. (This data is based on internal and emerging internal management
information and therefore has not been subject to the same degree of scrutiny and
quality assurance as an official statistic.)</p><p> </p><p>The learning from this
work is informing the new Targeted Case Review exercise announced in the ‘Fighting
Fraud in the Welfare System’ plan (published May 2022) which will review over 2 million
UC claims over the next 5 years.</p>
