The Department for Work and Pensions has issued a warning to people on Universal Credit with social media and bank accounts. It is creating a new 2,000-strong team to crackdown on benefit fraud.
The plan, called "Fighting Fraud in the Welfare System", aims to stop around £2 billion of losses due to fraud and error over the next five years. In the last year, more than 600 people across the UK were convicted of benefit fraud and the new team is to review more than two million existing Universal Credit claims.
The DWP team will look at the entitlements and circumstances of claims that it thinks are at risk of being incorrect, reports LancsLive. These will include suspicious cases that entered the system at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
