Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to his Department's Legal Entitlements and Administrative Practice exercise to identify people who have been underpaid State Pension, how many people identified as having received an underpayment have deceased, by each category of error; in how many of those cases his Department (a) has been unable to identify an heir and (b) has sent a letter to an heir and (i) has not received a response and (ii) has received a response but payment has not yet been made; and what steps his Department is taking to (A) identify heirs and (B) follow up cases where no response has been received to an initial contact letter.

This information is only available at disproportionate cost to The Department for Work & Pensions as the Department does not have a business requirement for this information to be retained.

The Department uses all available resources to identify heirs. In the instance when a response is not received for the initial contact letter, we issue further letters inviting the heir to contact DWP.

The Department will be publishing its progress with the State Pension Underpayment Legal Entitlements and Administrative Practice (LEAP) exercises to the end of February 2024 before the end of March 2024.