Social Security Benefits: EU Law

(asked on 17th November 2016) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many provisional benefit payments have been made by (1) HMRC and (2) DWP pursuant to Article 6 of Regulation (EC) No 987/2009 since 1 May 2010.


Answered by
Lord Freud Portrait
Lord Freud
This question was answered on 1st December 2016

Regulation (EC) 883/2004 co-ordinates social security systems across the EU, EEA and Switzerland. Regulation (EC) No 987/2009 is the implementation regulation which provides for administrative co-operation between Member States to implement the co-ordination regulation.

Article 6 provides for a Member State to make benefit payments on a provisional basis as the Member State of residence if there is a dispute with another Member State as to who is responsible for the payment of benefits. Article 7 provides for a Member State to make a provisional award of benefit if another Member State has not provided all the evidence requested from them.

The Government does not collect information on the number of provisional benefit payments made on the basis of either Article 6 or 7 of Regulation (EC) No 987/2009.

There is published guidance on how to determine an award of benefit through the application of Article 6 (Annex A DWP Annex B HMRC). This is part of the Decision Makers Guidance which is made available to the public.

In domestic guidance there is the facility for a decision maker to make an award of benefit where the evidence required is incomplete, with a revision of that award undertaken, if appropriate, once the required evidence is received. This would cover claims made under Article 7. Each claim to benefit is assessed on a case by case basis.

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