Thousands of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) claimants may be owed over £5,000 each due to administrative errors by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The mistakes have led to disabled people being underpaid or wrongly denied benefits for years.
Some claims were incorrectly rejected because applicants lacked a National Insurance number, despite this not being a requirement for PIP eligibility. The DWP has reviewed 455 such cases and paid out £500,000 in arrears over the past year.
The errors also stem from a misinterpretation of 'social support' following a 2019 Supreme Court ruling. The 'MM judgement' clarified how social support should be assessed in face-to-face interactions and when prompting counts as support.
Ayla Ozmen, head of policy at anti-poverty charity Z2K, warned that payment errors cause 'significant financial hardship' for disabled people. She urged the DWP to correct mistakes promptly. Former Liberal Democrat minister Sir Steve Webb said the reassessment of cases could have been processed more quickly but called rectifying underpayments 'the right thing to do'.
A DWP spokesperson said the department is 'fully committed to identifying claimants that are owed money and providing the financial support to which they are entitled as quickly as possible'. They added that the DWP plans to put disabled people's views 'at the heart of a ministerial review of PIP'.
