DWP’s Annual Report and Accounts 2024-25

Status / emerging findings

• DWP acknowledged flawed operational guidance on fluctuating earnings since 2015 affecting Carer's Allowance; only 26,000 of 200,000 under-reviewed cases qualify for debt write-off, leaving 87,000 claimants unresolved.
• Home Responsibilities Protection LEAP exercise closed prematurely with only 12,379 of 210,000 potentially underpaid people processed; £30 million in unpaid benefit and ~3,000 cases remain unresolved.
• PHSO expressed 'serious dissatisfaction' with DWP's stalled State Pension age Action Plan; compensation decision has been paused pending ministerial reconsideration.
• HMRC alert processing now fully funded (previously 50%), enabling real-time detection to prevent future overpayments, but this does not address historic failures.
• Committee expressed concern about DWP cultural issues, including internal communications perceived as dismissive of affected claimants.

Why it matters

Hundreds of thousands of vulnerable benefit claimants have been systematically underpaid or overclaimed without adequate remedy; these patterns suggest structural departmental failures that affect public confidence in welfare delivery.

Tone arc

Opened procedural but turned markedly adversarial as Permanent Secretary faced probing questions about why remediation efforts fell far short of the scale of identified errors, and why cultural change appeared superficial.

Key witnesses

Sir Peter Schofield (Permanent Secretary, DWP), Catherine Vaughan (DWP), Barbara Bennett (DWP), Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO)