More than £600,000 meant for benefit claimants has been stolen by staff at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The benefits-related fraud was committed in 2025/26 and brings the total stolen by DWP workers to around £4million over the last five years.
According to a recent report, the department carried out 40 internal investigations across 2025/26. A total of £612,715 in cash designated for benefit claimants such as pensioners, disabled and unemployed, was taken. Meanwhile, a further £103,681 was lost across 16 additional investigations related to non-benefits fraud. The DWP said “robust controls” are in place to prevent money from being taken, while they assured that anyone caught taking taxpayer cash will face the “full force of the law”.
As reported by The i Paper, Ros Altmann, the former pensions minister, described the latest figures as “shocking” despite dropping from the £1.7 million that was taken the year before. She said it was “diverting hard-earned taxpayer money away from people needing help from the DWP”.
The Labour Party has launched a crackdown on benefits fraud in the last 12 months. The DWP now has police-style surveillance and enforcement powers, which it hopes to save £1.5 billion by 2030.
Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden has also suggested the party will try and cut the welfare bill further. He said the DWP must stop “simply writing a cheque” for benefits claimants.
However, William Yarwood, the campaigns director of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said the scale of DWP staff fraud “makes a mockery of efforts to crack down on welfare abuse”. He said ministers must “recover the money” and “sack anyone responsible”.
In 2024, a former benefits worker, from Sunderland, was jailed for eight months. He was convicted of stealing thousands of pounds worth of winter fuel payments and carer’s allowance.
The year before, a woman from Liverpool diverted 20 payments of ESA worth £7,600 into her bank account. She was given a suspended sentenced after claiming the money was used to fund her gambling addiction.
A DWP spokesperson said: “DWP is one of the biggest departments in Government, and we take all allegations of fraud extremely seriously, whether this is internal or external to the department, and we investigate appropriately.
“We have taken action and have robust controls in place that have seen the amount of taxpayer money stolen through internal benefit fraud in 2025/26 stand at less than a half of what it was in 24/25 – but we will not stop there.
“Anybody caught abusing their position to fraudulently claim taxpayers’ money will be held to account with the full force of the law.”