DWP granted powers to deduct money directly for benefit fraud, except for state pensions

The Department for Work and Pensions has announced that one benefit will be exempt from bank account checks. The DWP has been granted new powers by the Labour Party government, allowing it to deduct money directly from payslips and accounts.

However, state pensioners are safe, according to DWP minister Liz Kendall. Under these new powers, benefit fraud investigators will be able to recover overclaimed debts directly from individuals' bank accounts.

Officials have previously attributed the ongoing rise in scams since Covid to an 'increasing propensity' for deceit within British society. Ms Kendall has pledged to modernise her department's two-decade-old powers, describing their current investigative capabilities as 'absurd'.

The DWP will soon have the authority to directly extract money from the pockets of benefit fraudsters, as part of the government's crackdown on welfare scams. It was revealed that DWP officials anticipate a 5 per cent annual increase in fraud.

During 2023-24, £9.7 billion of taxpayers' money was overpaid in benefits due to fraud and error, accounting for 3.7 per cent of total benefit expenditure. This is a rise from £8.3 billion and 3.6 per cent in 2022-23, with the rate of benefit overpayments consistently exceeding pre-Covid levels, reports Birmingham Live.

Ms Kendall wrote to the Telegraph, stating: "We're in an absurd situation where DWP's powers have not been updated for 20 years, meaning fraudsters have new ways of taking public money, and we need to keep pace with them."

She further explained to the newspaper: "My team are still, in 2024, sending letters to gather evidence for those suspected of welfare fraud, slowing them down to snail's pace when they could be shutting down serious fraud cases."