BENEFIT overpayments resulting from government administration errors are being written off.
Yesterday’s revelation in the States by Social Security Minister Lyndsay Feltham came in response to an oral question from Deputy Max Andrews.
Deputy Feltham said there had been no announcement of the decision, which was made early in her time as Social Security Minister, but that she would be soon be updating Scrutiny.
The minister added that she believed it was “common practice” to write off overpayments which were caused by administrative errors.
She added: “When I became minister, I reiterated that I don’t think someone on income support should be paying back overpayments because of an admin error and the department should take the right-first-time approach to minimise such errors.”
Last November, the then Social Security Minister Elaine Millar rejected a recommendation to write off benefit overpayments, claiming that it would be unfair and increase the cost of benefits to the taxpayer.
The Health and Social Security Scrutiny Panel had identified 45 key findings and made 26 recommendations as part of a review, launched last June, into the overpayment of income support benefits.
The 71-page report showed that as many as one in five people on income support were being chased to give back overpayments – many resulting from errors made by the government department responsible for handing them out.
It also shed light on the significant mental-health toll of the situation, with the impact “so severe in some cases that individuals have considered or attempted to take their own lives”.
The report says many Islanders were also being pushed into rental arrears, were having to choose between housing costs and buying food and medication, and were being forced to use food banks as a result of the “significant financial hardship” caused after being asked to repay money.
Deputy Millar accepted only three of the report’s 26 recommendations.
Following further questioning from fellow Deputies about “reasonableness” and “fairness”, Deputy Feltham said that overpayments were being looked at “individually” and the department assured her that “admin errors are few and far between”.
She added: “We are looking to make some changes by September which will reduce the volume of overpayments by up to 50%. That particular change will be around small overpayments that may well have been incurred due to a change of circumstances.
“It has to be our focus to get things right first time and minimise the number of overpayments that are being incurred.”
She did not have the total cost of writing off the overpayments to hand, but said she would refer back to all Members with this figure.
Deputy Millar previously said the policy of “writing off” would “increase the cost of income support to the taxpayer and would not be fair on other benefit claimants who have received the correct amount of benefit”. She added that without an increase in funding allocation, this proposal could lead to benefit rates being reduced to maintain spending within budget.
