The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is under fire for forcibly taking cash from state pensioners and Universal Credit claimants to pay for the Government’s own mistakes.
More than 30 organisations have demanded the department under DWP minister Liz Kendall stop recovering benefit debts caused by its own errors.
Freedom of Information (FOI) data, recovered by the Public Law Project, reveals 686,756 new “official error” Universal Credit overpayment cases were recorded in 2023/2024.
These debts occur when claimants are paid too much benefit due to mistakes made by the DWP itself. The errors can result in debts worth tens of thousands of pounds for vulnerable benefit recipients.
The DWP recovers these “overpaid” benefits by reducing future Universal Credit payments. Claimants can see their benefits cut by up to a quarter of their standard allowance.
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The DWP is forcing benefit claimants to pay back Universal Credit to pay off debts resulting from the Government’s own mistakes
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For many vulnerable people, these deductions create significant financial hardship. The practice affects hundreds of thousands of claimants who did nothing wrong.
A letter sent to Kendall highlights the case of a state pension-age man who cares for his disabled son, The Big Issue reports.
He was repeatedly advised by DWP officials to claim Universal Credit, despite having a partner with no recourse to public funds.
When the DWP later noticed their mistake, they stopped his claim. This resulted in an overpayment debt exceeding £38,000.
The man now faces the substantial debt burden despite following the department’s own advice. His situation exemplifies how official errors can have devastating financial consequences for vulnerable claimants.
Another student faced similar issues after the DWP failed to correctly process his university grant. Despite declaring all information and repeatedly providing documentation, the DWP wrongly treated his grant as a loan.
He discovered the error after hearing about similar cases from other students. “I did nothing wrong nor illegal,” he told Big Issue. “All I needed was some help at the hardest time of my life.”
The mistake triggered a “full mental health breakdown” when he received a bill for £1,478.68. It took over three years and legal intervention before the DWP agreed to waive £10,480.50 in overpayments.
Shameem Ahmad, chief executive of the Public Law Project, criticised the DWP’s approach to its own mistakes.
“No one is expecting the DWP not to make mistakes,” she said.
“However, it is incumbent on the department to take responsibility for those mistakes, rather than pushing that burden onto people it should in fact be supporting.
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DWP Minister Liz Kendall has promised sweeping changes to the welfare state PA “These official payment errors have real and highly detrimental consequences for people causing sudden financial pressures and anxieties, through no fault of their own.”
She urged the Government to seize “the chance to ensure it does not plunge hundreds of thousands of more people into debt.”
A DWP spokesperson said: “We always work with people who have been overpaid to ensure repayments are affordable,” they said. Overpayments by official error account for just 0.3 per cent of our overall benefits spend.
“We have an obligation to protect public funds and to ensure money lost to fraud and error is recovered, which is why we are bringing forward the biggest fraud crackdown in a generation, saving the taxpayer £1.5billion over the next five years.”