State Pension Underpayment Errors

Lord Davies of Brixton Excerpts

Tuesday 16th May 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Davies of Brixton]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to tackle under-payment errors in state pensions.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are fully committed to ensuring that state pension error is put right as quickly as possible. More than 1,300 staff have been recruited or redeployed to the ongoing state pension underpayment correction exercise, with case reviews expected to significantly increase this year. This is an issue that dates back many years, and we are working hard to correct these historic errors and to ensure that they do not happen again.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount for his reply and I know that he takes the issue seriously. However, it is notable that the figures published last week by the Office for National Statistics showed that the main cause of underpayment was what it termed “official error”, and in the last financial year, the underpayments totalled £580 million—£50 million more than in the previous year. It is getting worse. I note what the Minister says about additional staff, but it is clear that more needs to be done.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

The noble Lord is right. We know that 700,000 cases require review; an estimated 230,000 customers will be affected. In terms of what we have actually done, 173,538 cases have been reviewed; 46,760 underpayments have been identified, and just over £300 million was paid in arrears. As for the reasons that were highlighted by the noble Lord, they are multifarious. One is that DWP staff sometimes fail to manually set an action system prompt on state pension accounts to review payments, such as reaching an 80th birthday.