IT’S FIENDS WITH OUR BENEFITS

£2.4bn lost in fraud & errors

A SHOCKING £2.4billion of welfare benefits cash has been lost through fraud and payments made in error.

MPs have branded the figures an “absolute scandal” after it emerged the Department for Work and Pensions had made a string of gaffes.

In one case, a benefits recipient was paid an extra £546,000 due to a computer error – and was given 959 years to pay it back.

A total of £2bn was lost to false claims and £1.5bn from payment errors in 2016-17.

Government chiefs only managed to claw back £1.1bn and the errors have been blamed on a “farcical” computer system used to calculate hand-outs.

The mistakes happened despite an anti-fraud unit being launched last year by former Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith.

And Frank Field, chairman of the Work and Pensions Committee, warned: “I believe the real figure could be even higher.”

He claimed the loss of thousands of jobs at the DWP meant it did not have the staff to check if claimants are genuine.

He said: “The farcical computerisation of the benefits system has been a gift to fraudsters who know how to play the system.”

Dame Margaret Hodge, a former chairman of the Commons spending watchdog, said: “It is an absolute scandal that at a time when they’re cutting benefits and services, the Government is throwing billions of pounds away.”

Whitehall sources said £1.5bn in housing benefit wrongly handed out by councils accounted for 40% of overpayments.

Ministers hope a new computer programme will beat the fraudsters. The DWP said: “We are committed to tackling fraud and error in the benefits system.”