To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate her Department has made of the total cost to her Department of universal credit scams to date.

If a claimant has been the victim of a scam, and has not benefited from an advance in any way, they will not be asked to repay it. The Department considers all cases on their own merits and decisions are made on the strength of the evidence provided.

Completed investigations thus far, have shown that the total amount claimed in fraudulent Universal Credit (UC) advances as of 30^th September 2019 was £1,868,000 (rounded to the nearest thousand).

It is important to clarify that these are not losses. The Department will endeavour to recover this money and pursue fraudsters. Recovery has already started in some of these cases.