£3.3BILLION

Huge bill for extra benefits cash handed out by mistake

BENEFIT claimants were overpaid a staggering £3.3billion last year as blunders by officials and fraud jumped by 10 per cent.

Errors included hundreds of millions of pounds being wrongly handed to people who had moved abroad or got jobs after being unemployed.

Figures from the Department for Work and Pensions show that of all the money given as handouts last year, 1.9 per cent of it was paid in error. This was up from 1.8 per cent the year before.

A total of £3.3billion was paid to benefit claimaints in 2015/16 that they should never have received, compared to £3billion in 2014/5 – an increase of £300 million.

Although more than £1billion was recovered, this still left taxpayers £2.2billion out of pocket.

More than £1.3billion of the wrongful payments was in housing benefit, which is given to help people on low or no incomes to help cover their rent.

The main reason for housing benefit errors was claimants failing to declare their jobs and earnings correctly, leading to around half – £658million – of the incorrect payments.

Some £450million was overpaid in employment and support allowance (ESA), £330million in pension credit, £100million in jobseeker’s allowance and £19million in universal credit.

There was a more than ten-fold increase in the amount of ESA payments going to people who had moved abroad – from £3million to £38million.

A further £70million in pension credits was paid in error to people who had left the country, an increase from £55million in the previous year.

Last month, Kingston Crown Court heard how Mohamed Abrini, the Brussels and Paris attacks suspect nicknamed ‘the man in the hat’, was given £3,000 that had been wrongly paid in housing benefit to a man who had long since left Birmingham to fight for Islamic State.

Zakaria Boufassil was found guilty and Mohammed Ali Ahmed pleaded guilty to withdrawing the money from the bank account of Isis jihadi Anouar Haddouchi – a Belgian national who had still been getting benefits despite having left the West Midlands for Syria – and handing it to Abrini in a Birmingham park in July 2015.

Abrini is accused of going on the run after taking part in the Paris attacks last November. He was allegedly captured on CCTV wearing a hat as he walked into Brussels airport with one of the suitcases filled with explosives.

Baroness Cathy Bakewell, the Lib Dem spokesman on work and pensions, said: ‘This Government seem desperate to find new ways to show their incompetence.

‘On their watch overpayments on benefits are increasing, while failure to pay the full amount to those who need it is at a record high. Ultimately the people who suffer most from this systemic failure are the genuine claimants who need support the most.

‘We need tougher penalties on those who abuse the system. But we also need action against administrators who are failing in their basic duty of care.’

A DWP spokesman said: ‘The reality is fraud and error in the benefits system is historically low, and at 1.9 per cent is lower than in 2010. Claimant error and official error are at their lowest level ever, and we are protecting taxpayers’ money, recovering a record £1bn in overpaid benefits last year.

‘We have brought in reforms to improve detection, prevention and recovery and our fraud investigators work tirelessly to bring criminals to justice - last year we prosecuted around 5,000 fraudsters and issued around 6,000 administrative penalties.’

‘We need tougher penalties’