John Robertson
Labour, Glasgow North West
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what estimate he has made of the amount that has been (a) overpaid and (b) underpaid in benefits in each of the last five years in (i) Glasgow North West constituency, (ii) Glasgow, (iii) Scotland and (iv) the UK.
Steve Webb
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions
Constituency, Glasgow-wide and Scotland fraud and error estimates are not available.
The estimated amount of money overpaid and underpaid through benefit fraud and error in Great Britain can be found on the DWP National Statistics Fraud and Error in the Benefit System webpage:
http://statistics.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd2/index.php?page=fraud_error
For the last five years the estimated level of benefit fraud and error was as follows:
| Overpayments | Underpayments | |||
| £ billion | Percentage | £ billion | Percentage | |
| 2012-13(1) | 3.5 | 2.1 | 1.4 | 0.9 |
| 2011-12 | 3.4 | 2.1 | 1.3 | 0.8 |
| 2010-11 | 3.2 | 2.1 | 1.2 | 0.8 |
| 2009-10 | 3.3 | 2.2 | 1.3 | 0.9 |
| 2008-09 | 2.9 | 2.2 | 1.2 | 0.9 |
| (1) 2012-13 are preliminary estimates based on estimated 2012-13 financial year expenditure and October 2011 to September 2012 sample data for individual benefits. | ||||
Northern Ireland fraud and error estimates, which are comparable to the above Great Britain statistics, can be found at:
http://www.dsdni.gov.uk/index/publications/annual_reports/publications-ssa-annual-reports.htm
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