Losses Due To Housing Benefit Fraud and Errors Rising

Iain Duncan Smith’s department has failed to tackle escalating losses due to fraud and error in the housing benefit system, according to a report by parliament’s spending watchdog. The DWP overpaid claimants with £1.4bn of taxpayers’ money from 2013 to 2014, the public accounts committee has said. The MPs also found that civil servants had “done nothing” to tackle underpayment, which has put thousands of claimants into hardship, they said. Ministers and senior civil servants were pointedly criticised in the report’s conclusions for failing to come up with a strategy to tackle the problem. Read more on the Guardian website.