Peter Schofield spoke out to MPs, giving evidence to the Treasury Committee last week, where he announced it would be targeted
Peter Schofield spoke out to MPs, giving evidence to the Treasury Committee last week, where he announced Pension Credit would be targeted(Image: )
The Department for Work and Pensions has announced a “full review” of a benefit claimed by 1.4 million people as part of a crackdown under the Labour Party government.
DWP chief Peter Schofield spoke out to MPs, giving evidence to the Treasury Committee last week, where he announced Pension Credit would be targeted.
According to DWP figures, 1.4 million people are in receipt of Pension Credit. But the DWP and Labour are intent on driving down beneft fraud and stop the welfare bill from ballooning. At August 2024, there were 1.4 million people receiving Pension Credit, representing a total of 1.5 million beneficiaries including partners.
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He said: “Absolutely this is a big focus for us in the department. Coming out of the pandemic, we set out a tackling fraud and error plan, to really drive down fraud and error, and a number of measures that we took.”
He explained: “Where we’ve focused on fraud and error really hard – and we’ve started with Universal Credit because it was the biggest area of loss – we’ve seen big improvements.
“We can now turn our attention to Pension Credit as well. We’re also doing a targeted case review, so I can add that to the list on Pension Credit.”
At August 2024, two thirds (66%) of people getting Pension Credit (PC) were women. There were 15,000 fewer recipients against the previous year.
A long-term downward trend in the PC caseload has been due to the raising of the State Pension Age and the introduction of new State Pensions (nSP) in April 2016, among other factors.
A DWP spokesperson said: “We are bringing forward the biggest fraud crackdown in a generation, as part of wider action to save £14.6billion by 2031.
“From 2026 to 2029, we will be conducting full case reviews of Pension Credit claims, which is forecast to save £500million over this period.”