Employment and Support Allowance

Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

I thank the noble Baroness for her response. I turn straightaway to her point about restricting—as it were—the payments. Initially the department believed that we were legally restricted to calculating repayments from 2014 due to a statutory rule—Section 27 of the Social Security Act 1998—which governs the position with regard to payment of arrears when a court of tribunal finds that the department has made an error of law. Following a thorough investigation, however, we realised that this interpretation was incorrect. We have made this very clear in previous Statements to the House and we have made it clear that we have been working extremely hard to do everything we can to correct a mistake that should never have been made in the first place. We believed, however, that the law prevented our paying benefit back to the date of conversion. We now understand that we can do that. We have listened to a range of opinions, including those of the CPAG, undertaken a thorough investigation of the legal position and realised that the law that dictated that we could not do this in the first place was wrong.

We want to be sure, therefore, that we pay back everything that is owed. I would add that the staff have been working extremely hard to put this right and to help everybody who may have lost out from these payments since the whole process of migrating people from incapacity benefit to ESA began in 2008.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)]

My Lords, is the Minister satisfied that the reduction in the departmental expenditure limit that the DWP has experienced over the past five to 10 years has not contributed to this error? She has just said that the DWP is now putting 400 staff on the case. I have a serious concern about the extent to which staff shortages are occasioning these massive administrative blunders that cause not just inconvenience but serious financial difficulty to large numbers of the population. Can she confirm that passported benefits will also be paid by way of compensation, because some of the people who have been left out in these underpayments have also lost out on free dentistry, NHS treatment, travel and free school meals, to the extent that it would accumulate to large sums of money each year, in addition to not getting the benefits to which they are entitled?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, let me make it clear that we do not believe that this is attributable to staff reductions at the Department for Work and Pensions. We still have over 70,000 employees. We have also been working hard to do more since 2010. Since this Government came to power, we have spent £5.4 billion a year more than we were doing in 2010 to support people with disabilities. We continue to do so while upping our game and, yes, demanding more from our employees, who are working extremely hard. That is to ensure that we have the proper resource and the staff to make sure that we can review all these cases at pace. We have already started making payments—over £40 million in arrears so far—so we are doing everything we can to ensure that people get the support they are entitled to and at pace.

Based on my meetings with the Minister of State for Disability and our Permanent Secretary, who made a robust case for delivery by our department in front of the Public Accounts Committee last week, I can say that the department is working hard. Yes, we are doing more, so noble Lords could say we are a little stretched, but we are proud of what we are doing and delivering. We want to get this right. On passporting benefits over to UC, we are making sure that people will not lose out in what they are entitled to.