Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op) (Urgent Question):
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if she will
make a statement on the historic underpayment of benefits to
118,000 benefit claimants and the Government’s plans for
compensation. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work
and Pensions (David Rutley) I would like to start by extending an
apology to Ms U for the experiences that have been highlighted in
the Parliamentary and...Request free
trial
(Leicester South)
(Lab/Co-op)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Work and
Pensions if she will make a statement on the historic
underpayment of benefits to 118,000 benefit claimants and the
Government’s plans for compensation.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
()
I would like to start by extending an apology to Ms U for the
experiences that have been highlighted in the Parliamentary and
Health Service Ombudsman’s report. The Department will, of
course, formally apologise and make additional payments now that
that the PHSO report has been published.
I should remind the House that the employment support allowance
was introduced in 2008, and from March 2011 the Department began
reassessing people in incapacity benefits for eligibility for
ESA, which saw some claimants underpaid. The Department’s
priority was that all people get the financial support to which
they are entitled. It undertook a special exercise to review all
cases that were potentially affected and paid arrears where due.
We realised how important it was to get this matter fixed and
ensure that people get the benefits that they are owed as quickly
as possible. We therefore set up a dedicated team, with up to
1,200 staff at the peak of the workload. This has enabled us to
complete this important work at pace.
I remind the House that the exercise to correct past ESA payments
and pay arrears, following conversion from the previous
incapacity benefits, was completed last year, and the then
Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, my hon. Friend the
Member for North Swindon (), made a statement to the
House in July 2021. All cases have been considered and reviews
completed, where the information has been provided, and arrears
due were paid. As of 1 June 2021, we have reviewed approximately
600,000 cases and made 118,000 arrears payments to those who are
eligible, totalling £613 million. The Department published an
update on the exercise last Thursday on gov.uk, which sets out
further detail on the progress that it has made on processing the
cases.
May I start by paying tribute to the Greenwich Welfare Rights
Service and to my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham ()? It is a reminder of the
value and the vital importance of welfare rights advisers, who do
so much for our constituents despite grappling with swingeing
cuts under the last 10 years of Conservative Government.
The report came about because a vulnerable person with
significant long-term health needs, recovering from a heart
bypass, was forced to endure years of hardship, trying to live on
less than 50% of what she was entitled to, for a sustained period
because of mistakes made by the Department for Work and Pensions
when it migrated 100,000 claimants from incapacity benefit to
contribution-based employment and support allowance between 2011
and 2014. The ombudsman’s report today not only vindicates
Greenwich Welfare Rights and hon. Members who pursued the case,
but is damning for the Government.
The DWP’s incompetence and failure to provide compensation has
been judged as maladministration. Does the Minister accept that,
as a consequence of the Department’s incompetence, more than
100,000 people were unable to access passported benefits and
extra support such as free prescriptions, despite being highly
vulnerable and often having long-term health needs?
The ombudsman rules that refusal to offer recompense for that was
inconsistent with the Department’s own principles of remedy. With
respect, and although I welcome the apology, it is no good
Ministers’ putting their fingers in their ears and pretending
that there is not a bigger problem here. This stands as—in the
words of this report—“an unremedied injustice”, impacting on some
of the most vulnerable people in society.
Will Ministers remedy that injustice via compensation for those
affected, as the ombudsman and the Department’s own principles
recommend, or will the Minister deny compensation to 118,000
disabled people and people with long-term health conditions who
lost out through no fault of their own? Frankly, when disabled
people face a cost-of-living crisis with rising heating bills,
when 600,000 disabled people are struggling with a universal
credit cut, and when disabled people face their support being cut
this April because inflation is heading to 6%, does this sorry
saga of maladministration not prove once again that disabled
people are worse off under this Government?
I agree absolutely with the right hon. Gentleman’s comments about
welfare advisers. They play a vital role, whether in Greenwich or
in Macclesfield, where we have the Disability Information Bureau,
and provide the extra support that people in very vulnerable
circumstances often need. He highlighted the situation involving
Ms U; as I said in my apology, it was very concerning, and those
compensation payments will be paid, as I have reassured him.
On the point about broader compensation, of course we only
received the report this morning—it has only just been
published—so we will consider it and review its recommendations,
as is entirely right. We would also say that if people believe
they should have further compensation and want to contact us at
DWP, they can contact us through the various helplines that have
been set up. There is a team working specifically on this broad
issue, and if they prefer, they can go through the complaints
process, so those avenues are available to those individuals. In
these situations we are typically not compelled to come forward
with compensation payments, but we will consider the wider points
and the views put forward by the report.
(Wantage) (Con)
I know from the individual constituent cases I have dealt with
how distressing it is when people’s benefits are underpaid. One
issue here is dealing with compensation payments, but the other
is taking the steps to ensure something like this does not happen
again. Can my hon. Friend assure me that those steps, if they
have not been taken already, are in the process of being
taken?
Lessons really have been learned from this situation, and if
underpayments are made, that can have a real impact on people’s
lives. Lessons will be learned from this. While it is not my
departmental responsibility, I will take this away and work
closely with the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work
and the Secretary of State, who is not able to be here today, to
see what further lessons we can learn as a result of this report.
As I have said, we must formally reply to the report as well.
(Kilmarnock and Loudoun)
(SNP)
Under this Tory Government, we have had the Women Against State
Pension Inequality Campaign scandal, the universal credit cuts,
pensioners now losing £500 a year and a cost-of-living crisis
that they are doing nothing about. They really do not care. It is
outrageous that it has taken the ombudsman to determine that
compensation is due to the 118,000 claimants underpaid for up to
seven years. Of course people should be paid compensation for
having been forced to live in poverty, so what are the timescales
for providing justice to those claimants?
In August 2021, there were still 76,000 cases open for review.
What is that number now? What are the Government doing to assess
the extra top-ups that were due, such as enhanced disability,
severe disability, carer and pension premiums, that have not yet
been considered for all the 118,000 underpaid claimants? Scope
estimates that at present 42% of families on disability benefits
live in poverty. What are the Government’s plans to rectify that?
Pension credits are consistently underclaimed; when will they
make that an automatic entitlement, and when will there ever be a
level playing field between the DWP’s responsibilities and the
way it treats claimants?
The hon. Gentleman has made a number of points. Arrears have
already been paid to the 118,000, but the team are still in
place, so when people are deceased and the surviving parties
feel, on the basis of the report, that they could be eligible to
receive such arrears, they can do so. I have already explained
how those who feel they should receive further compensation can
find out more about the process of investigating that. I agree
with the hon. Gentleman that we need to do more to increase
people’s awareness of the pension credits that are available. He
also mentioned people with vulnerabilities. We want to help those
people, which is why we established the household support fund
and made additional funds available in Scotland as well.
(Harrow East) (Con)
During the period of the inquiry the benefits system was
incredibly complicated, involving many mutually exclusive
benefits. I well remember talking on the helplines to civil
servants who did not know which elements were mutually exclusive
and which were not. Will my hon. Friend bear in mind the need to
ensure that the system is straightforward, that people can
understand it, and that people are paid the compensation and the
benefits they are due? We are talking about the most vulnerable
members of society.
My hon. Friend has made some good points. I know that he has a
proven track record in this area, given his campaigning work both
locally and nationally. The benefits system is indeed
complicated. Universal credit has helped to simplify it by
putting benefits into a single bundle, but as the new Minister on
the welfare delivery block, I am aware that the system is still
complex even under the universal credit banner. I shall be
working hard to ensure that we can communicate clearly with some
of those most vulnerable people in explaining what benefits are
available; and, as I have said, we will review the report and see
what further lessons can be learnt.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. May I just say to Members who were not present at the
outset that they should not expect to be called, and ask them
please not to try to take advantage? I call the Chair of the Work
and Pensions Committee, .
(East Ham) (Lab)
I welcome this important report, and I thank you, Mr Speaker, for
granting the urgent question.
What is the position relating to the payment of interest in cases
such as this? The ombudsman found that these failings had had a
severe effect on Ms U’s existing mental and physical health
problems, and no doubt the same is true for quite a number of the
other 118,000 people affected. Will the Department work out,
proactively, who should be receiving compensation? One of the
ombudsman’s recommendations is that the Department should report
to the Select Committee on its progress in considering his report
and the decisions that it makes on how to remedy its own
failings. Will the Department accept the recommendation and
report to the Committee, and if so, when can we expect that to
happen?
Obviously the primary responsibility is to respond to the report,
and we will do that, but I—and, no doubt, the Secretary of
State—will note the right hon. Member’s point, and will make
appropriate responses to his Committee. I have mentioned the
118,000 people who have received the arrears, and, as I said
earlier to the Opposition spokesman, the right hon. Member for
Leicester South ()—I am sorry, I should
have said “the shadow Secretary of State”: I do not want to
understate his importance—there are mechanisms for those who feel
they have grounds for further compensation to get in touch with
the Department and explore that further.
(Clwyd South) (Con)
The benefits system is crucially important to my constituents.
The Resolution Foundation has praised it, and has praised
universal credit for its resilience during the pandemic. Will the
Minister commit himself to maintaining that resilience for the
benefit of everyone in the country?
My hon. Friend has made a good point. There are people who
criticise universal credit, but, as I said earlier, it is a
simplifying mechanism. It proved to be very resilient in response
to the pandemic, and it helped millions of people at a crucial
time. We have learnt lessons in that regard, but, as we have said
before and as I have reiterated today, there are wider lessons
that we also need to learn, and we will do so.
(Eltham) (Lab)
I wish to pay tribute to Greenwich Borough Council’s welfare
rights unit for identifying this error and for the tenacity with
which it pursued it on behalf of my constituent. This will affect
the 118,000 other people who have also been wronged. My
constituent suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, arthritis,
hypertension and Graves’ disease. This decision left her to
survive on far less than she was entitled to between 23 May 2012
and 11 August 2017, amounting to £80 a week. The DWP, having made
this error, compounded the problem by refusing to allow her to
complain to the independent case examiner and by failing to tell
her about her right to go to the ombudsman.
The ombudsman has now recommended that, within one month of the
final report, the DWP should write to my constituent to apologise
for the impact of maladministration on her life, make a payment
of £7,500 to compensate her for the impact and apply the
appropriate rate of interest to the benefit arrears payment of
£19,832.55. Will the Minister give me an undertaking that the DWP
will comply with the ombudsman’s recommendations on behalf of my
constituent?
As I said right at the beginning, the hon. Gentleman has
represented his constituent’s case well, as I would expect. We
apologise unreservedly for the situation in which his
constituent, Ms U, found herself. We will pay the compensation
and the interest, as set out in the report. That will happen, and
I very much hope we can get the apology over to her well before
the month set out by the ombudsman. I will gladly discuss this
further with the hon. Gentleman after this urgent question.
(Vauxhall)
(Lab/Co-op)
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman said in its
judgment:
“It is human to make mistakes but not acting to right wrongs is a
matter of policy choice.”
In this case the choice has been made by the very organisation
that is responsible for supporting those most in need. Will the
Minister please outline how many people in my Vauxhall
constituency were impacted by underpayments? This decision has
had a devastating impact by causing financial hardship for some
of the most vulnerable people. They need that compensation now,
so can he confirm that it will happen?
I understand the hon. Lady’s point. I genuinely do not know how
many were in the Vauxhall constituency, as we do not have that
level of data. As I set out, there are mechanisms that her
constituents who might have concerns can follow up. We will
formally respond to the report, as I set out.
(Dudley North) (Con)
Such incidents are obviously very regrettable, so having robust
IT systems and finding ways to design out the human element that
might have caused these mistakes is clearly very important. Can
the Minister assure me that every possible effort will be made to
ensure such incidents do not happen again?
We all make mistakes, and this was clearly a big one. All I can
say is that we will learn the lessons. We made an active response
when we found out the scale of the problem. We did the review,
and then we put 1,200 staff into this exercise to rectify the
situation. We did not take it lightly. We responded actively to
the situation once we found the error.
(North East Fife)
(LD)
I think all hon. Members here know this is not the first time the
ombudsman has found maladministration in relation to the
Department for Work and Pensions. Before Christmas I wrote to the
Minister about two of my constituents who seem to have been given
incorrect advice by benefit advisers in relation to being on
remand and being released without charge. They are suffering
financial hardship as a result. I listened to what he said about
reading the report and taking its recommendations, but what is
the DWP doing when these issues are highlighted to it by MPs and
rights agencies to ensure we deal with them at an early
stage?
I am relatively new in post—I have been here about three or four
months—and all I can say is that I take a very active interest in
the correspondence from MPs across the House. I hope people are
aware of that. I will gladly separately follow up either in
writing or in a meeting about the particular points that the hon.
Member makes. We need to learn lessons. Our postbags are
invaluable sources of information that sometimes are not really
seen by officials or civil servants in the same light. It is an
invaluable source of information to help me do my job. I will
gladly follow up.
(Gateshead) (Lab)
The problems highlighted by the ombudsman’s report were not only
predictable, but in some respects were predicted. Welfare rights
workers are brilliant at what they do on behalf of our
constituents, but they are often swamped by the demand, but would
they be necessary at all if the Department was doing its work
properly, efficiently, in a timely fashion and getting its
determinations right for our constituents in the first place? Can
the Minister outline how many people in my constituency of
Gateshead were affected by this ministerial and departmental
maladministration? If he cannot do so now, will he do so in
writing in short order?
I would like to, but unfortunately we do not have that data at
that individual level. [Interruption.] As I was about to go on to
say, let me see what is available, and I can follow up. What I
will say is that an error has been made here—I accept that—but we
all know that many, many people who work in the Department for
Work and Pensions do a fantastic job and are committed to serving
people who are very vulnerable. Through this error, I would not
want to cast a view across all DWP civil servants; they do a
remarkable job. I accept that we made an error in this situation,
and I will follow up on the points the hon. Member makes.
(Aberdeen North) (SNP)
The Government and this Department have a track record of having
to be dragged to the ombudsman or dragged to court to make the
most basic human decisions. In Scotland, we put dignity and
respect at the heart of everything we do with regards to social
security. Does the Minister not agree that that would be a much
better approach than having to be dragged to court or the
ombudsman to make decisions that should have been made in the
first place?
I understand the point the hon. Member makes. There are obviously
competing challenges here. We are here today worrying about the
concerns of some very vulnerable people, but we also need to look
at the taxpayers’ demands, too, and there are challenges, as the
Scottish Government will discover as they start to take on more
benefits. We work closely with the Scottish Government in their
desire to take on more responsibility for welfare provision, and
all I would say is that things are not always straightforward;
there are very challenging circumstances, as Members on the
Opposition Benches who have been in these offices will know. I
accept the challenge, but we are working together with the
Scottish Government to give support here. We will learn the
lessons from this case and move forward.
(Kingston upon Hull North)
(Lab)
May I just say that it is very disappointing that this had to be
an urgent question today, rather than a statement from the
Government? It is also very disappointing that the Minister does
not have the basic information that most constituency MPs will
want to know, which is how many of our constituents have been
affected by the maladministration of his Department. Can he
reassure me that he will employ the same energy his Department
uses to pursue those who receive overpayments to ensure that
those people who should get compensation and payments for
benefits that they did not receive will do so?
Yes. We are a very large operational Department that takes care
of the needs of millions of people. It is disappointing to me
when we make errors. I work as hard as I can day in, day out to
ensure we do not make errors. Sometimes we do and they are
genuine and then we need to rectify them speedily. Sometimes they
are fraudulent situations, and when we have a figure of £8.4
billion for fraud, partly because of the increase in welfare
payments around coronavirus, we have to go through procedures,
because some people, sadly and disappointingly, are trying to rip
off the taxpayer and take money away from people who deserve it.
There is a difficult balance. I understand the point that the
right hon. Lady makes and I can assure her I am working hard on
those points.
(Denton and Reddish)
(Lab)
It is not the first time that there has been a finding of
maladministration at the DWP; there was a similar judgment on the
pensions of 1950s-born women. That does prompt questions about
the DWP’s competence.
On this specific issue, I was going to ask the Minister how many
people in the Denton and Reddish constituency are affected, but
he does not have that data, which I find astounding, quite
frankly. That is basic data that Members of Parliament need. Why
is the onus on individuals to come forward to the DWP? Why is he
not being proactive in going out to the individuals who are
affected? That seems like common sense to me.
We were very active in engaging in with the 118,000 people to
make sure that their arrears were paid. As I said, if people
still believe that arrears are owed or that they should receive
further compensation, they can get in touch with the available
helplines. We will, as I said, consider and review the report,
which we received—as it was published—only today.
(Swansea West)
(Lab/Co-op)
The Minister will know that the UK was found to be in breach of
the human rights of people with disabilities by the United
Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.
He will know that some 7 million people live in food insecurity
and food poverty in Britain. In Wales, we earn only 70% of the UK
average, so thousands of vulnerable people in Swansea have been
hit by this. Will he ensure not just that those people are paid,
but that payments are made to charities for disabilities, and
that we look again at universal credit uplift and perhaps a
universal basic income so that the poorest do not continually
fall through the net during the cost-of-living crisis?
I think I have highlighted what we are going to do in response to
this particular situation. The hon. Gentleman makes some other
points about what we are doing on food security and for those
vulnerable people. As he knows, we have created an additional
support fund—in England, it is called the household support
fund—of £500 million across the UK. A chunk of that money—around
£21 million, from memory; it is over £20 million anyway—has gone
to Wales, and the Welsh Government are using it to help
vulnerable people. We recognise that there are people who need
further support.
On universal basic income, people who have tried that out—ask the
Finnish Government—said that it is not the way forward; it is
untargeted and does not provide a work incentive. I do not think
it is the way forward. Of course, we can always improve our
welfare approaches, but that is not the approach that would
help.
(North Ayrshire and Arran)
(SNP)
The Minister has said that we are talking about some of the most
vulnerable people, so does he not think it shameful that 42% of
families relying on disability benefits are still living in
poverty? Can he tell us what long-term strategy his Government
have to address that and lift those families out of poverty? Will
he make sure that the DWP will permanently continue virtual and
telephone health assessments to help remove some of the barriers
for disabled people who need the support? Often, that is the most
stressful part of the entire process of claiming support.
More needs to be done to make those processes simpler. Again,
this specific area is not part of my portfolio or brief, but we
have made significant progress in getting disabled people into
work, and we want to move that forward with the disability
strategy and a clear action plan. I know that my colleague the
Minister for Disabled People will actively drive that forward
across the nations, and will work very closely on that with the
Scottish Government as well.
(Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for his replies. There is no doubt that the
inaccuracy of benefit payments will have a detrimental impact on
individuals and their families throughout the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Many of those 118,000 people
are vulnerable and face the injustice of arrears. Those moneys
belong to those people. Will the Minister confirm a timescale in
which those affected are likely to receive their compensation?
How many of the people to whom unpaid money is due are from
Northern Ireland? What amount of money is due for Northern
Ireland? I would appreciate an answer today, but if the Minister
does not have the figures, I am very happy to wait for a written
response.
The exercise to pay the arrears to the 118,000 people is
complete. As of 1 June 2021, we have reviewed 600,000 cases. The
118,000 arrears payments were made to those who were eligible,
and a total of £613 million has been paid. I will follow up on
the hon. Gentleman’s other points.
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