DWP may soon be able to gather information from banks and airlines about where claimants are traveling to and for how long as part of a tougher effort to stamp out benefit fraud. This is part of a new set of powers which has been proposed by officials.

Figures published in May showed benefit fraud totalled £6.4 billion in the 2022-2023 fiscal year ending in April, down from a record £6.5 billion the previous year. This is a major problem, since fraud instruction manuals are available online. According to statistics, most of the crimes involved Universal Credit claims.