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.

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/wms/?id=2026-10-26.hcws415.0