21 January 2005
Accounts at the Department for Work and Pensions have failed to satisfy government auditors for the fifteenth year in a row.
The National Audit Office's examination of DWP finances found no change in the amount of public money lost through benefit fraud and error and qualified the accounts yet again.
Benefit losses are still about £3bn — a figure that has remained unchanged for the past three years and represents some 2.8% of the DWP's £109bn annual spend.
The two benefits most prone to error are income support and Jobseeker's Allowance, accounting for a total £840m of losses in 2003/04. However, this was a big improvement on previous years, and showed the DWP had exceeded its target of a 33% reduction in fraud and error losses by March 2004.
Auditor general Sir John Bourn praised the DWP for meeting its target but added: 'An estimated £3bn of welfare benefit was paid to people who were not properly entitled to the money. Therefore the challenges the department faces in reducing the scale of fraud and error across the benefit system to an acceptable level still remains very large indeed.'
PFjan2005