MPs have raised fears the Government's huge welfare shake-up will leave the benefits system more vulnerable to fraud.

A report by the Communities and Local Government Committee highlighted several concerns about Universal Credit, which will be implemented nationally from October and replaces a string of benefits such as housing benefit and child tax credits.

The committee highlighted concerns raised during an inquiry into the changes the IT system under Universal Credit will have trouble distinguishing between genuine and fraudulent claims.

One council told the committee its understanding was that the system would not work from local authority property databases so it would not be able to detect automatically, as local systems did now, when several people made a housing benefit claim for the same property.

A new fraud detection service, called Iris, is being built into Universal Credit which the committee was told does have a similar database to that used by local authorities for detecting housing benefit fraud.

However, the committee's report said it is "worrying the system still seems to be at the the development stage".