The UK House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) released a scathing report on the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) on Friday, highlighting “errors dating as far back as 1985.”
Problems with the state pension payment system have resulted in an estimated 134,000 pensioners being underpaid by over £1 billion ($1.36 billion). Of the pensioners impacted by the problems, it is thought 94,000 are alive today.
“The errors happened because of the Department’s use of outdated systems and heavily manual processing, coupled with complacency in monitoring errors and a quality assurance framework that is not fit for purpose,” the report stated.
Even the department’s attempts to improve the situation were criticized, as the committee stated that there have already been nine attempts at fixing the mistakes since 2018.