Sir Iain Duncan Smith corrected the Commons record on Welfare Spending

1 February 2013 · Commons Hansard, Written Corrections

The words were spoken in the Commons on 28 January 2013. The correction was made by letter from Iain Duncan Smith, and printed in Hansard's Written Corrections on 1 February 2013. The figure £5 billion in the original became £4 billion in the correction. Altogether 4 words differ between the two versions.

The question

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the progress that he has made in controlling welfare expenditure, particularly given that under the previous Government, the costs rose by no less than 60%. However, there is always more to do. Will he outline what we are doing to clamp down on welfare fraud?

Original and corrected words

Struck through: original only. Bold: correction only.

Original	Corrected
My hon. Friend is right about the situation that we were left. We are already bearing down on the problem. The figures show that we are making inroads into welfare fraud. Universal credit will have a much better record in this area, because we will be able to use real-time information to check up on who is in work and what they are earning on a monthly basis, rather than having to wait until the end of somebody’s time on tax credits at the end of a year and reconcile the figures over a long period. Under the current tax credits system, £5 billion has been written off as a result of fraud and error, and it looks like another £5 billion will also be written off.	My hon. Friend is right about the situation that we were left. We are already bearing down on the problem. The figures show that we are making inroads into welfare fraud. Universal credit will have a much better record in this area, because we will be able to use real-time information to check up on who is in work and what they are earning on a monthly basis, rather than having to wait until the end of somebody’s time on tax credits at the end of a year and reconcile the figures over a long period. Under the current tax credits system, £4 billion has been written off as a result of fraud and error, and it looks like another £4 billion will also be written off.

Original

Corrected

My hon. Friend is right about the situation that we were left. We are already bearing down on the problem. The figures show that we are making inroads into welfare fraud. Universal credit will have a much better record in this area, because we will be able to use real-time information to check up on who is in work and what they are earning on a monthly basis, rather than having to wait until the end of somebody’s time on tax credits at the end of a year and reconcile the figures over a long period. Under the current tax credits system, £5 billion has been written off as a result of fraud and error, and it looks like another £5 billion will also be written off.

My hon. Friend is right about the situation that we were left. We are already bearing down on the problem. The figures show that we are making inroads into welfare fraud. Universal credit will have a much better record in this area, because we will be able to use real-time information to check up on who is in work and what they are earning on a monthly basis, rather than having to wait until the end of somebody’s time on tax credits at the end of a year and reconcile the figures over a long period. Under the current tax credits system, £4 billion has been written off as a result of fraud and error, and it looks like another £4 billion will also be written off.

The correction in Hansard.

Receipt

Read from	https://hansard-api.parliament.uk/debates/debate/13020140000003.json
Date read	15 October 2026
SHA-256	`50e73f4b44a9376eb0bdc69f9945585b3f166a0c933ef1565100cd38db8d627b`