The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has underpaid almost £1.5billion to thousands of benefit claimants, with State Pension backpay now on the cards. It comes as 237,000 older people have been underpaid their State Pension by a total of £1.46billion, according to DWP accounts for 2021-22.
The National Audit Office published its most recent figures in October last year. During its ongoing correction exercise, the DWP revealed a further 100,000 potential underpayments.
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.” The additional underpayments were identified via a change in the scanning system which means that the sample of State Pension cases DWP will now look at for errors is 700,000 instead of 400,000, LancsLive reports.