Minister for Innovation, Fraud & Data (): I am informing the
House that the Department for Work and Pensions has issued the
first Eligibility Verification Notice under powers introduced by
the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Act 2025,
which amends the Social Security Administration Act 1992.
This marks an important step in the Department's use of data to
assist with identifying and preventing fraud and error,
correcting inaccurate benefit payments sooner and helping prevent
avoidable debt.
The Eligibility Verification Measure is expected to save the
taxpayer £1.2 billion over the next five years and will help
ensure that people receive the support to which they are
entitled, while protecting public money and addressing suspected
fraud. Eligibility Verification Notices require banks and other
financial institutions to check relevant accounts receiving
specified benefit payments against eligibility indicators.
These indicators are criteria that can help DWP identify whether
a specified benefit is, or has been, paid incorrectly, having
regard to the benefit rules relating to a person's capital or
time spent abroad. Limited information is only returned where an
account meets an eligibility indicator, indicating that a payment
may be incorrect.
The information received will act only as a prompt for further
checks. Information received through EVM will not, in isolation,
imply that a person is guilty of any wrongdoing or that their
benefit entitlement will change. DWP will have regard to all
information relevant to a benefit decision, including information
that was not obtained through EVM. Decisions will continue to be
made by trained Departmental staff through established processes.
Implementation will begin through a controlled test-and-learn
phase so that systems, data quality, operational impacts and
customer outcomes can be assessed before the measure is scaled
up.
The measure contains a number of clear and vital safeguards. The
legislation clearly sets out the benefits in scope, the purpose
of the power and the type of information that can and cannot be
shared under it, including a prohibition on financial
institutions sharing transaction information or special category
data, except for information indicating that an account is in
receipt of a specified benefit. The Department will exercise
these powers in accordance with the legislation and the statutory
Code of Practice, issued and published on GOV.UK in May 2026.
Further information about the Eligibility Verification Measure,
including how the power will be used, accounts in scope and where
relevant, other accounts linked to them can be found on GOV.UK.
Independent oversight will be provided by an Independent
Reviewer, appointed through an open, fair and transparent
process, who will annually review the Department's use of the
power and produce reports, which will be laid in Parliament.
Delivery of this vital new measure forms part of the Department's
strong response to fraud and error which has already saved £27
billion in 2025-26 using preventative frontline controls and
detection by counter fraud teams.
