Disabled campaigners lift lid on new DWP benefits scandal

Despite the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) constantly spewing hatred about Universal Credit claimants stealing taxpayer money, disabled campaigners are reporting that some are being overpaid payments.

Disability News Service (DNS) reported that disabled researcher and campaigner Caroline Richardson was contacted by multiple claimants who’d been overpaid.

DWP absolutely useless, again

Campaigners identified that over payments were made to people receiving both contribution-based employment and support allowance (ESA) and Universal Credit. Basically, the DWP is recording ESA payments as lower than the amounts actually being paid out. Therefore, Universal Credit is increased to compensate for the reduction through the DWP’s ‘transitional protection programme.’

This means claimants are overpaid Universal Credit and, as with the Carers Allowance scandal, there are fears they’ll be asked to pay it back without warning.

These errors are also affecting council tax. One claimant was told to pay an extra £546 a year because the council thought her universal credit had increased due to the DWP’s woeful bookkeeping.

Richardson told DNS:

I am struggling to understand how this has gone so catastrophically wrong, and whether it has gone wrong for everybody. This is going to cause disabled people an enormous amount of worry. It is just such a mess.

Richardson checked her online Universal Credit journal before she received her benefits in her account. This meant she was able to contact DWP and try to stop her own £388 overpayment.

However, because the DWP is a clusterfuck, Richardson was issued with both a correct statement. She then received a notification acknowledging the overpayment and noting it would need to be repaid to DWP in instalments.

Richardson said:

It just seems like the whole DWP is functioning so badly, and they are blaming claimants for their mistakes. The more universal credit is rolled out, the more the errors in the software are going to be exposed.

DWP already under fire for blaiming claimants

In February, the Public Accounts Committee also pulled the DWP up for not taking accountability for their own issues and instead blaming claimants.

They found that between 2024 and 2025, claimants were overpaid by £1 billion due to the DWP’s own errors. This is up from £0.8 billion in 2023-24. However, this is cancelled out by the fact that claimants were underpaid by £1.2 billion for the same reason 2024-25. This is up from £1.1 billion in 2023-24.

The report said:

The DWP has carried out some work to tackle the root causes of fraud and error – but this has focused on those committed by claimants, rather than errors by officials.

DNS also spoke to disability activist Flick Williams, who has already repaid a £289 overpayment. However, she is still expected to pay £546 in extra annual council tax because her council thinks her benefits have increased too.

Williams said:

How many people would let their universal credit go into their account, not check it and just assume the money in their account was theirs to spend?

Another scandal brewing

This comes as yet another Carers’ Allowance inquiry could be on the cards. The department is still chasing unpaid carers for repayments after their case was discredited.

Debbie Abrahams, Chair of the Work and Pensions committee told Stephen Timms that:

The failure to offer carers redress with due care would lead the public to conclude that [it] is not serious in its public commitment to do so, which is extremely damaging to the existing issues of trust with the department.

As the Canary’s Alex Cocker reported at the time:

Spoiler alert: we have already concluded that the DWP is not serious about righting its injustices. Because, you know, its injustices could fill around 2,244 articles on a mid-sized indie news site.

Despite all this evidence, the DWP told John Pring that:

it would be wrong to describe the overpayments as a developing scandal, and insisted that it took overpayments very seriously, was aware of this issue, and was working to resolve the cases of those affected.

With the DWP fraud and error statistics out later this week it will be interesting to see just how much overpayment has increased since the latest Universal Credit forced migration.

But it’s becoming ever clearer that the DWP is a joke of an organisation that doesn’t care about claimants. It’s time the whole thing was abolished.

Featured image via the Canary

By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

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