The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has "basically finished" its state pension correction exercise and is making "good progress" to address Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) errors, Permanent Secretary, Peter Schofield, has confirmed.

Schofield was asked for an update on the DWP's work to address historical state pension underpayments during the latest Work and Pensions Committee hearing.

In his response, he confirmed that the DWP has been through over 800,000 records, and ended up paying over £700m over a three-year period.

"I praise the professionalism of the team, because this is real detective work that they have gone through, but they have got there, and they have got money to people," he stated.

"I am really pleased, and I apologise through this committee to customers for these historic underpayments.

"It was vital that we restored confidence in the system, and one of the ways that we did that was by doing more work through our survey data on getting to grips with any other historic errors that there might have been."

Schofield said the DWP is also making "good progress" in addressing HRP errors, despite a "slow rate" of individuals approaching the department about this issue, with around 11,000 of the 19,000 cases so far handed over to DWP having been dealt with.

"On that specifically, HMRC have been leading the way, because this relates to the national insurance record and linking that to child benefit claims prior to 2000 - these are quite historic claims," he explained.

"HMRC have put details on their website - I think there have been almost 500,000 hits to their website. They have written over 300,000 letters to affected people.

"They are now seeing cases coming through the door - at quite a slow rate, I should say.

"Those are then addressed in terms of correcting the national insurance record. That then enables us to change the state pension entitlement and, if someone is already in receipt of
state pension, to then pay any arrears.

"We have got through around 11,000 of those that have come through. Around 19,000 have been handed over to DWP, and we have got through around 11,000 of those,
so we are making good progress on that."

Schofield also reassured the committee that work is ongoing to avoid this issue happening again, highlighting the DWP's joint work with HMRC as an example of this, after the two departments brought their internal audit teams together.

DWP director general, finance, Catherine Vaughan, highlighted the work to launch a new serivce to enable savers to check their voluntary NI contributions without needing to contact DWP or HMRC as a further example of a lesson learned.

"This gives a further opportunity for people to have confidence in the accuracy of the system," she said.

Schofield also highlighted broader improvements, noting that DWP has "crucially" also been moving state pension records on to a new, modern platform, the Get your State Pension platform.

"This initially was for new claims since 2016, but we are now starting to move some of the older claims over," he explained.

"Being on a modern platform enables us to have the facility to scan and analyse the caseload much more effectively to see if we can pick up cases.

"Up until now, the main way of picking up cases has been through the normal sampling we do on fraud and error each year, which is obviously a limited sample. However, on modern platforms, we will be able to do more of a scan.

"It is a continuous process of gathering data when we can, learning as we
go along and improving the way we do our processes."

Schofield suggested that this could also be an opportunity for broader policy learnings, stating: "At the heart of this—this is something for the committee to think about in the context of policy change in the future—is thinking about the value of going for a more simplified benefits system, as we have seen with the new state pension or with universal credit.

"You reduce the risk of human error as part of the process, and you make it easier to automate processes and get money to people more quickly.

"With the new state pension and the Get your State Pension platform - with the two together - we can pay in an automatic way the vast majority of people who apply, with no need for human hands, because we can draw on data on national insurance records and we can get money into people’s bank accounts quickly.

"That speeds the process and makes it less likely to fall victim to human error. That is all part of this."

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