DWP cannot recover all benefit overpayments

The Department for Work and Pensions cannot recover welfare benefit payments through the courts where the claimant is not at fault, the Supreme Court has ruled.

Between March 2006 and February 2007 the DWP wrote to over 65,000 claimants telling them it could sue them, if they did not return overpayments made as a result of administrative errors.

The benefits involved included income support, incapacity benefit, disability living allowance, jobseekers’ allowance and child benefit.

In The Child Poverty Action Group v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2010] UKSC 54, the judges said it was common ground that the secretary of state was entitled to recover overpayments resulting from misrepresentation or non-disclosure (what you and I would call benefit fraud).

But what about through no fault of the citizen benefit was overpaid because of the mistake at DWP? From now the citizen can keep the money.

The Judge said it was “entirely rational” for Parliament to decide that only those whose behaviour brought about the overpayments should be liable to reimburse them.

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