Employment and Support Allowance: Underpayments

Lord Walney Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Newton]

I reassure the hon. Gentleman that people would have been on benefits, so it is not fair to say that—or to characterise the situation as one in which—people would not have had any benefits. Clearly, some people would have benefited from additional payments because we did not give them the right amount of money, but people did have those payments in the first place.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Ind)]

The Minister is sorry and says lessons are being learnt, but where is the sense of accountability for this terrible error, which has had such a profound effect on many thousands of people’s lives? Where are the extra staff and resource coming from to sort out this problem? Which areas of the DWP’s work are being deprioritised to make this right?

[Sarah Newton]

On the question about accountability, of course the National Audit Office has undertaken an inquiry into this issue and so has the Public Accounts Committee. There has been a lot of scrutiny, and it is quite right that there has been so much. I do not hold back from saying that this should never have happened. It is a very serious situation that we do take very seriously and are working hard to rectify. Please be assured that that is the case, that we have made the resources available, and that we will complete this exercise this year.