Government attacked over Universal Credit state pension shambles

Shocking failed state pensions exposed by a This is Money inquiry were challenged in parliament yesterday by Liberal Democrat MP Wendy Chamberlain.

She demanded the government explain errors in the records of people claiming Universal Credit that could leave them with pension shortfalls when they retire.

“It leads to a series of mistakes and leaves pensioners without the benefits they are entitled to. It’s not an inheritance issue. It is happening now,” the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for Work and Pension told fellow MPs.

The Leader of the House of Commons, Penny Mordaunt, acknowledged it was an important issue and promised to ask the Minister for Work and Pensions for a response.

A This is Money probe found that the National Insurance records of potentially millions of people claiming Universal Credit now and in the past are riddled with holes.

The Department of Work and Pensions tried to dodge our questions, but we found evidence that the system intended to automatically update their NI credits has never worked or broken since 2018.

People with Universal Credit only have their state pension corrected manually if they have reached state pension age within four months. But they can fall through the net and be underpaid as a result, or waste money on state pension supplements they don’t need.

Evasions by DWP spokesmen about these issues were unraveled after readers of This is Money handed us letters and an email from the department’s own junior officials describing them in full.

This revealed that it was a long-standing, internally known issue that there is no working system for automatically updating Universal Credit claimants’ NI balances and no timeframe for resolving it.

Despite this, the Gov.uk website is currently still misleading Universal Credit claimants into thinking NI credits are updated automatically.

Wendy Chamberlain of the Lib Dems was among current and former politicians from all parties who condemned these revelations and called on the government to “acknowledge” or “come clean” in our story published yesterday.

That same morning Chamberlain said in the House of Commons: ‘There are reports today that the Government has misled pensioners into thinking that their Universal Credit National Insurance credits are automatically applied to their NI records when in fact the system is either broken or has never been because they are applied manually.

“It leads to a series of mistakes and leaves pensioners without the benefits they are entitled to. It’s not an inheritance issue. it’s happening now.

“So when will the government set aside time to discuss this issue in the House to be transparent about what’s actually happening and outline what steps are being taken to make sure our voters don’t face deficits in retirement that they might not even have? be aware of.’

Tory leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt replied: ‘This is an important issue and I thank the honorable lady for raising it.

“I will make sure that the Secretary of State has heard her concerns today. The section questions are not until the beginning of March and I will ask her to reply to the honorable lady and see what can be done to inform all Members of this House.’

In early December, the DWP fobbed off a Shadow Labor minister who tried to sort out the failures.

Gerald Jones MP, shadow minister for Wales, asked in a written question ‘when the technical issues open since 2018 to allocate National Insurance credits to Universal Credit claims will be resolved’.

DWP Minister of State Guy Opperman – the UK’s longest-serving Pensions Minister before his promotion last year after a five-year term – responded: ‘The technical issues referred to have been identified and DWP has taken steps to rectify them . ‘

This is Money first revealed last November that a mysterious “glitch” in state pension data was causing Universal Credit applicants to struggle to close potentially costly gaps in their income.

At the end of last year, we reported more cases and revealed how people were stopped by staff from three separate government departments in the DWP and HMRC, all of whom refused to help them.

After confronting the government with 10 more cases for our latest story, and asking us why it had tried to cover up serious failures in automatically updating the state pension data of people claiming Universal Credit, a DWP spokesperson said: ” All raised cases have now been resolved and we apologize for the inconvenience.

“We are working with HMRC on an improved process to add historical and future Universal Credit National Insurance credits to National Insurance records.”