While the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is making a big deal of the fact that Personal Independence Payment (PIP) fraud has gone up by a whole percentage point, unfulfilled eligibility is double that.
Alongside the fraud and error in the benefits system report, the DWP snuck out the Unfulfilled eligibility in the benefit system report. This detailed how much claimants weren’t getting because they hadn’t told the department about a change in their circumstances.
Across the whole benefits system, unfulfilled eligibility was £3.7 billion. For benefits such as Universal Credit, this is usually when a claimant doesn’t inform the DWP that their earnings or housing costs have changed.
For Universal Credit, the Unfulfilled Eligibility rate was £1,290 million in Financial Year Ending (FYE) 2026, rising from £970 million in FYE 2025. That means that around 10 in every 100 Universal Credit claims had Unfulfilled Eligibility in FYE 2026. Considering the DWP is hellbent on forcing people into work and off Universal Credit, it’s vile to see that many aren’t claiming what they’re entitled to.
In Universal Credit, the amount of money saved is still far less than what’s lost to fraud and error at £6,720m.
PIP saves double what is lost to fraud
However, in Personal Independence Payment (PIP), £950 million was saved in unfulfilled eligibility, whilst just £410 million was lost in fraud.
As already reported in the Canary, much of the ‘fraud’ is actually people not realising they have to inform the DWP if their condition improves. On the opposite end of the spectrum, all of the claimants are missing out on more PIP because they haven’t reported that their conditions have worsened.
So while they make a big deal out of the fraud figures, the DWP is completely brushing over the fact that they save double what they lose in ‘PIP fraud’ by people being too scared to tell them their circumstances have changed.
‘Scared’ might seem a like a bit of an exaggeration, but considering the DWP continuously demonises disabled claimants through the media, this makes sense. There’s also the fact that the department is attempting to prove conditions like ADHD and anxiety are overdiagnosed so they can restrict the PIP criteria.
And there’s nothing to actually say that disabled people reporting their condition worsening would get more money. As the Canary previously reported, since Labour got back in power, the amount of claimants who saw an increase in their benefits after reassessment has plummeted. This is despite every right-wing rag screaming that claims have gone up and are out of control.
In the previous five years, the monthly percentage award increases after reassessment have almost never fallen below 10%. That’s except for July 2025, when it fell to 8.33%. It also slightly dipped to 9.9% in November 2024.
However, in the most recent quarter (November 2025 to January 2026) all three months saw increases of less than 8% for PIP reassessments. In November 2025, the increase was 7.93%. In December 2025, it was just 5.41% and then in January 2026 it was 5.99%. Over the entire quarter, on average, just 6.44% of claimants saw an increase.
DWP could help people, but they don’t want to
There’s also the fact that if the DWP can make these estimates, they must know a huge number of people are losing out and aren’t doing anything to help them receive any more money.
And that, in a nutshell, is how much the department actually cares, because if they wanted to support more people to get what they’re entitled to, they would.
But that would increase the amount of DWP expenditure, which makes it clear why they haven’t reached out.
Featured image via Getty Images/mrdoomit
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