August 2019 – Universal Credit, Advance Payments & Fraud
As many of you will have seen on the news, many claimants have been targeted by fraudsters claiming to be able to access grants for people that actually turned out to be advance loans for Universal Credit (UC). So far 1,400 people who have been moved onto UC by virtue of suspected fraud have been interviewed under caution, according to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.
When questioned about the 42,000 cases of suspected advance payment fraud in universal credit and the processes for assessing whether a person has been complicit in the fraud or not, the minister stated that if a case is raised as fraud by DWP staff, the usual procedure will be for the individual to be interviewed, which should reveal what happened.
The minister also confirmed that any people who have been moved to universal credit by virtue of fraud would be able to move back to legacy benefits if they chose to.
However, the DWP has backtracked on assurances that innocent victims of advance payment fraud will not be expected to pay money back.
Responding to an urgent question in Parliament yesterday on the recent BBC report which claimed that tens of millions of pounds of public money is believed to have been stolen through fraudulently obtained universal credit advances, it was said that the figures quoted are unverified but that they will look at each of the cases raised and, where it is clear that the claimant is an innocent victim who has been targeted, there would be an expectation that they would not pay the money back.
However, soon after the debate concluded, the BBC reported that the DWP had backtracked on this assurance stating that victims of the scam would have to repay any money they had kept.
If someones details are fraudulently used to claim an advance but they do not themselves receive this payment, we will not recover the money from the claimant,
but if the individual receives some of the advance, we will seek to recover this amount from them and will pursue the fraudster for any remaining payment.
During a debate on the issue in the House of Lords, Baroness Buscombe gave further details of the work on dealing with advance payment fraud, saying that there have been 42,000 fraud referrals from staff relating to potentially fraudulent advance claims; the majority of fraudulent claims (55 per cent) are in the north-west, but with an increasing proportion in the north-east (14 per cent) and the Midlands (12 per cent); and there are currently around 1,400 live prosecution cases underway.
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