This morning, I received a text promising me I was “pre-qualified” for a DWP benefit – all I needed to do was click the link. I deleted it instantly: government doesn’t send texts from overseas mobile numbers asking you to click links. But it made me think a little more about the implications of one of the interesting stories to come out of our audits this summer.
We have all grown used to the constant scams and phishing we see in our daily lives. And it’s no surprise: fraud makes up around 40% of all crime in England and Wales. We are constantly bombarded with messages promising money, jobs, refunds and much more, all eroding our willingness to believe any communication we receive out of the blue.
Now imagine you receive a letter in the post that says you could be owed money. It says it's from the government and all you have to do is fill in a form with your personal details.
Would you actually believe it?
Because it turns out most wouldn’t.
That is one of the challenges that HM Revenue and Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions faced when trying to repay around £1bn that it owes to pensioners under the Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) scheme.
Home Responsibilities Protection
HRP was a scheme between 1978 and 2010 that reduced the number of years that people looking after children or caring for sick and disabled people had to work to receive the full basic State Pension. The idea was to protect people with caring responsibilities from losing out in retirement.
But there were gaps in data collection which meant government wasn’t able to attribute HRP to all of the National Insurance records it should have. As a result, thousands of people – predominantly women – didn’t get the pension they were entitled to. DWP and HMRC identified the error and the underpayments and set aside £1.2bn to pay people what they were owed.
At first, DWP and HMRC believed that they would reach and correct the records of 90% of those entitled to repayments. Yet as of 31 March 2025, only around £100m has been paid out and DWP now estimates only 8% will claim the money they are owed.
Why such a low response?
To identify those eligible and make repayments, government sent out letters to people stating that the recipient may have missing HRP on their record – they could enter their details online to find out if they had been affected and were, potentially, owed substantial amounts of state pension from government. But in the event very few people chose to check. Why?
DWP research found a wide range of reasons for the low take-up, with most relating to people who received the letter either not trusting it or not thinking it was relevant to them. DWP concluded that: “The level of risk aversion described by participants, paired with a lack of confidence in being able to accurately identify genuine communications from scams, was a major barrier with no clear solution.”
Building back confidence
This situation demonstrates that the challenge government faces from scams isn’t just to protect public money but also to create systems that build public trust. When communications are mistaken for scams, that trust is weakened and the credibility of the system is put into question. What should have been a chance to demonstrate fairness instead risks reinforcing scepticism.
My suspicion is that many civil servants will already be thinking about the need to build systems where they can trust that the person they are dealing with is who they say they are. But they also need to have ways of convincing members of the public that it’s really the government talking.
Joshua Reddaway is director of fraud and propriety at the NAO. See our latest work here