I was puzzled when the story originally came out as to why large numbers of people didn't complain when their benefits where reduced. The reality was that their benefits
weren't reduced, which is why they didn't notice anything amiss. Under the old pre-2011 rules, no extra money.
As I understand it, there had been no automatic transition from contribution based IB to income related IB. You had to put in a specific and separate claim for income related IB. With ESA there was no separate claim required, although I'm not sure what mechanism was there to move from one to the other.
With income-related ESA came other possible
additional benefits. The post-2010 change giving a one year limit on contribution based ESA, automatically brought forward the income-related stage. Without that change they
wouldn't have been eligible for anything extra.
The assumption was made by DWP staff that if if somebody was already on contribution based IB, then they should automatically be transferred to the contribution based ESA. On the face of it, nothing unreasonable about that. The issue was that if their finances were such that if they had put in a fresh claim for income based ESA, that is what they would have received along with the additional benefits.
Quote:
Who is due arrears?
2.9 To qualify for arrears people will have:
• had their claim converted to ESA from older-style incapacity benefits;
• had a claim that was still live at 21 October 2014; and
• been awarded contribution-based ESA only, but had an underlying entitlement to income-related ESA
(and met the eligibility criteria for one or more premiums at the time of conversion).
|
The transfers would still have taken place under Labour, and the error still there. It's just so happens the bulk of the transitions were made post Labour, some will have been made under Labour. Labour should have specified that the transition process also evaluated the claimants income-related status, seeing as ESA now covered both types.
Nothing sinister, underhand, or dishonest took place.
Quote:
2.3 The root cause of the error was that the Department’s processes did not deliver
what was set out in law. Social security legislation from 2010 imposed a duty on
the Department to award on conversion what would have been awarded if a new
claim for ESA was made. As ESA is made up of two strands (contribution-based
and income‑related), this would have required an assessment of entitlement to both
strands of the benefit. In practice, the Department did not require its decision-making
staff to gather the information they needed to make this assessment. The Department
described the process in place at the time as set out below:
• Claimants’ existing benefits were used as a proxy. The Department told us that
it used an automated process to transfer those in receipt of an income-related
benefit, such as Income Support, to income-related ESA, and assumed those
solely in receipt of a contribution-based benefit, such as Incapacity Benefit, would
transfer to contribution-based ESA.
• Claimants who were not already receiving an income-related benefit were to
be invited to provide additional income data if they thought they might have
an additional entitlement.
• Claimants were contacted by telephone prior to the conversion to explain the
process and next steps. Claimants then received a letter at the point of conversion
advising them of their payment type and rate.
|