Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the cost to the public purse was of maladministration payments issued by her Department in the last 12 months.

The information requested is published within the DWP Annual Reports and Accounts. Data for April 2024 to March 2025 will be published in the 2024/25 DWP Annual Reports and Accounts in or around July 2025.

The latest published data is for the period April 2023 to March 2024. In the period April 2023 to March 2024, DWP made 10,567 ex-gratia payments totalling £1.3 million for maladministration.

Please note that the total amount of ex-gratia payments for maladministration presented in the DWP Annual Reports and Accounts excludes financial redress paid for loss of statutory entitlement because it is not an extra cost arising from maladministration, but payment of benefit that should have been made anyway.

The average value of maladministration payments in the period April 2023 to March 2024 was £120. This value has been calculated based on the unrounded total payments and unrounded number of payments, rounded to the nearest £10.