DWP identifies further 100,000 older people who may be due State Pension back payments averaging £6,500

dailyrecord.co.uk:

The most recent report published by the National Audit Office on the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) accounts for 2021-22 was released in October last year and revealed that around 237,000 older people have been underpaid their State Pension by a total of £1.46billion.However, during a formal meeting this week with the Work and Pensions Committee, DWP indicated that it has identified a further 100,000 potential underpayments during its ongoing correction exercise.

Permanent Secretary at DWP Peter Schofield, told the cross-party committee of MPs, chaired by Sir Stephen Timms: “We have found more cases of underpayment.”He explained that due to a change in the scanning system during the exercise, a further 100,000 “potential” underpayments have been identified, which means that the sample of State Pension cases DWP will now look at for errors is 700,000 instead of 400,000.

Mr Schofield said he thinks it could now take an extra year to complete the exercise given the current run-rate.He said: “I am very sorry on behalf of the Department that we have made these underpayments, I am though pleased that I have now detected more of the underpayment that was out there.”During the first 15 months of the correction exercise, the DWP reviewed 54,000 State Pension cases, followed by a further 58,000 over a seven-month period ending in October 2022.

Mr Schofield explained this highlighted the increased run-rate that will “rapidly increase further” when more staff are assigned to the exercise.He also said that out of the 112,000 cases DWP looked at they identified 31,817 with an underpayment and paid in total to that group of people, £209 million.