‘Intimidating’ DWP letter sent to state pensioners | European Markets

Former pensions minister Sir Steve Webb has hit out on the Division for Work and Pensions (DWP) over letters despatched to grieving households asking them to return overpaid pension funds with out making it clear that reimbursement is non-compulsory.

Sir Steve revealed that the DWP has inadvertently paid out over £500 million in state pension and pension credit funds to accounts of deceased individuals in a five-year span, managing to recoup about half of that quantity.

Whereas these overpayments following a particular person’s death aren’t legally enforceable, the DWP makes an attempt to reclaim funds as voluntary repayments, citing a responsibility to the taxpayers. “It’s not a blunder, it’s just a feature of the system,” Sir Steve stated.

He defined, “The question is, what should happen then? And the bit that struck me as odd is that DWP try to get the money back, but don’t have a legal right to insist.”

Sir Steve, presently a accomplice at pension consultancy LCP (Lane Clark and Peacock), has raised issues after submitting a freedom of info request to secure a copy of the letter despatched out to reclaim overpayments. “Nowhere does it say that this is voluntary,” he identified.

The letter consists of an FAQ part, however fails to ask “Do I have to do this?”, which Sir Steve highlighted as problematic. He expressed his fear: “And the result, I fear, is that it’s a lottery, and the losers of the lottery are people who are intimidated or frightened or upset by a letter. “, they’ve simply been bereaved.

“They get a letter from the Government demanding hundreds of pounds back, and they just send it because they think they have to. They don’t want, you know, they perhaps fear a knock at the door kind of thing, whereas other people, who perhaps are aware they don’t have to pay it back or just choose not to, don’t.”

Sir Steve argued that there ought to be readability within the law, stating both everybody should repay the money or the Authorities ought to stop requesting repayments. “This kind of halfway house of … we know that it’s not mandatory when we send the letters, but we’re not going to tell you … that doesn’t seem right to me.”

The Division for Work and Pensions (DWP) has admitted that there’s no obligatory legal responsibility to repay overpaid funds however insists on its function to attempt to recoup the money. A spokesperson from the DWP remarked: “It is not our intention to cause distress, however, we have a responsibility to taxpayers to recover overpayments. We acknowledge this is not always possible.”

They additional famous: “Whilst there is no legal obligation to repay a debt of this type, we recognise some people will be willing to repay money to which there was no entitlement. We provide full contact details and encourage anyone with concerns to call us.”

The DWP has defined it doesn’t ship extra fee requests if no acknowledgement is obtained after the initial contact and makes an attempt to reclaim the funds are sometimes made via the bank concerned within the transaction or from the deceased’s rapid household.