In last year’s annual report from the DWP it said: ‘With benefit spending at £266.1bn in 2023-24, the welfare system is a deliberate target for both organised crime groups and opportunistic individuals’.

This has now become more evident than ever as there has been multiple large scale benefit frauds in the past few years, such as the gang of Bulgarians who ripped the taxpayer off for over £50m. This gang were all charged and have either fulfilled their sentences or are in the midst of doing so, but an investigation was only sparked by a Bulgarian police officer reporting an influx of money into a small town in Bulgaria.

The last thing the DWP is expecting is for large scale fraud to come from inside the benefit office itself.