Chris Leslie – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chris Leslie on 2015-11-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the reasons for increased benefit fraud in the last financial year.

Justin Tomlinson

The 2014-2015 national statistics for fraud and error were published on 5 November 2015. We are committed to tackling fraud and error, and these figures show a reduction in total benefit fraud and error to the lowest ever level of 1.8%. There was a slight increase of 0.1% in the benefit fraud figure (from 0.7% in 2013-2014 to 0.8%).