Struggling Universal Credit claimants are being forced to pay back up £80 a month to the government after being overpaid through no fault of their own, an MP has revealed.
A plea for the UK Government to stop pursuing accidental overpayments the DWP makes to benefit claimants has been made by the SNP's David Linden.
The Glasgow East MP has called on the Department of Work and Pensions to show compassion and “waive” the recovery of overpaid benefits to struggling constituents.
Linden, who represents some of the most deprived wards in the Scotland, said the paybacks were pushing innocent people further into poverty.
Speaking in a Commons adjournment debate said “The DWP almost always asks for the money back. Overpaid claimants can ask the DWP to ‘waive’ recovery, but only about ten waiver requests were successful in 2021, set against 337,000 new overpayments caused by DWP mistakes in the same period. “
“The DWP now openly asserts that it will only abandon recovery in ‘exceptional’ cases.”
Linden called on Ministers to take into account the circumstances of the individual when considering recovering a no-fault debt and to reduce the limit of the deductions from 15 per cent from somebody’s future universal credit payments to five per cent.
He added: “No matter how an overpayment of Universal Credit happened, the Department for Work and Pensions can ask for it back. That’s the case even when somebody has done nothing wrong, and indeed has done everything that could reasonably have been expected of them.”
Linden added:” These issues are adversely impacting my constituents and indeed people right across these islands. I think we could alleviate the immense difficulty the state is unnecessarily inflicting on those we seek to represent.
It is clear that these issues are occurring more and more and it would be an abdication of responsibility on the part of the Government not to act to resolve this.”
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