Flawed transfer meant many were wrongly assessed
Claimants are being refused backpayments over the botched migration from incapacity benefit to Employment Support Allowance (ESA).
As much as £150 million is owed to disabled people by the Department for Work and Pensions, a National Audit Office (NAO) report published last week shows.
It concludes that DWP underpaid about 70,000 people between February 2011 – when the reassessment process began – and the end of 2014, because of its failure to realise that many of these claimants were entitled to income-related ESA.
However, the social security’s appeal tribunal only ruled on 21 October 2014 that DWP had been wrongly following social security legislation, allowing ministers to say they can legally only pay arrears to those whose claims were still live on that date and who were subsequently underpaid.
This means that it will not pay back an estimated £100 million to £150 million in arrears that date from before 21 October 2014, which DWP says it cannot legally pay.
Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), said: “It is disgusting that DWP are refusing to refund payments disabled people have lost due to their errors and incompetence.”
She described DWP’s refusal to pay all the refunds as “theft.”
The DWP is still likely to have to pay about £340 million in back-payments for claims that were live on 21 October 2014, with average payments likely to be about £5,000, although a small number could receive as much as £20,000.
DPAC has called for an exception to be made by DWP, so the back-payments are disregarded in the same way as criminal injuries compensation awards.
A DWP spokeswoman said: “We have already reviewed over 4,000 cases, of which around 1,500 cases were incorrect and have been paid arrears of just over £9 million. The first payments were made in September 2017.
“When we were made aware of individual cases relating to this issue in 2013, these were dealt with at the time and additional guidance was put in place.
“The vast majority of cases transferred to ESA were done so correctly.”