This is my Mum, who died two years ago today in her 98th year. But this blog post is about the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). I’ll be sending a copy of this blog post to my MP.
When someone dies there is a fair amount of ‘sadmin’, sad administration, to do. There are many things to do and for a while getting it all done is to some extent a useful part of the grieving process. One of the things is ‘telling people’; relatives, friends, utility companies, banks and government agencies and departments. Government organisations can be told in one go, through a very useful and sensible thing call ‘Tell us Once‘.
Settling the deceased person’s estate and getting probate takes a bit of time and I, an only child, decided to pay a solicitor to do that, just because it was simpler and the money left by Mum would very easily pay the costs.
I engaged a local firm of solicitors to do the work (they already had Mum’s will, had drafted and then activated a Power of Attorney document that my wise mother had got drawn up many years ago and decided to activate a few years before her passing, and had done the legal work for selling her bungalow a few years earlier when she moved into a local care home just round the corner from us).
Imagine the scene when Rosemary and I met a solicitor, let’s call her Sally (not her real name), in her offices and handed over a pile of documents including; death certificates, bank statements, Premium Bond numbers, share certificates, NI number, my father’s death certificate from 27 years earlier, tax returns etc etc.). It was all in good order as Mum kept everything in files and I had been looking after her affairs for a few years so I knew what was what too.
Sally warned us about two things. The first was that it is unpredictable how long probate takes. Actually, probate was fairly quick. The second was that the DWP rarely looks at a deceased person’s estate before probate is achieved and that they sometimes seek money from an estate if they believe that benefits had been overpaid. That rang an alarm bell in my head.
The alarm bell was not because Mum was a crook (would I be telling you this tale if she were?) but because I knew that she had had discussions with DWP about Pension Credit payments over several years. She was trying to persuade DWP that they shouldn’t be paying her Pension Credit (but she failed).
Here is a brief explanation. When my father died, Mum was left with some savings and a small state pension (she had been one of the first NHS nurses but had not been allowed to continue working in an NHS hospital in Bristol when she married my father (times were different then) and so paid NI contributions for a limited period). Her income, savings and age qualified her for the Pension Credit top up, and she got it. Years later, when her younger brother died, she inherited all his estate (the proceeds of the sale of a small flat in South Wales, some savings and some shares) which was not huge but she was the sole beneficiary, and she was now comfortably off. She was comfortably off partly because she had reached the age when she wasn’t going to go around splashing the cash (not that she ever did). So, Mum, told DWP that her circumstances had changed and she didn’t think she should get these extra payments any more.
Mum first told DWP by ‘phoning them up which means there is no record of what was said, except that she made notes on letters received from DWP telling her how much Pension Credit she would get next year saying that she had queried this and was told that it was all fine. Mum worried about this, she had a well-developed sense of fairness, and she wrote to DWP too. She wrote to them on a piece of paper (she had never turned on a computer or seen an email) so we don’t know what she wrote but we do know how they replied and she was told that DWP wouldn’t review her Pension Credit payments for now and she would continue getting them. I think there are two such letters but I haven’t seen them since handing them over to Sally, just under two years ago.
At this stage, two years after Mum’s death, DWP have not told Sally whether or not they are going to ask for repayment of Pension Credit payments from my Mum’s estate. And Sally has been chasing them, and she last asked them this very week and DWP couldn’t say whether they wanted any money from us nor when they might decide whether or not they wanted any money from us.
It would be slightly disingenuous of me to say I don’t care either way what the answer is but I am pretty close to that position. There is £50k sitting in the solicitor’s client account which will more than pay off any amount requested. I would be unimpressed if two years after her death, and something like 15 years (a guess, I haven’t seen the papers for two years!) after payments were queried by Mum, DWP decided that they shouldn’t have been paying them, they were wrong to tell her on the phone and in writing that all was OK and now ask for them back. But if they do, then they will get the money. It is sitting there waiting and will soon enter its third year of waiting. This is a very strange way for the state to conduct its affairs.
I believe in paying taxes. The country is more skint than I am and that £50k would be nice to have but some of it could be helping to fund the NHS in which Mum worked and from which she received care. Obviously, it might be spent on nuclear warheads too but that’s not my choice.
But DWP is not in a position to say what is its decision nor when it might reach one. We are in limbo and although I don’t spend much time thinking about it, the money sitting with our solicitor isn’t doing good for the state, it’s not doing any good for the economy and it’s not doing any good for me, my kids, grandkids or any charities I might decide deserve donations. When I think of Mum it is difficult not also to think about unfinished business with a massive government department and I think it is time to move on from that.
There must, I assume, be thousands of people in similar positions and millions of pounds just sitting around – not being spent wisely by the state or by individuals (and the lawyers haven’t been paid because it isn’t finished yet!). Rachel Reeves would surely rather that £50k were divided between DWP, Sally and fed into the economy by the Avery family than sitting Zombie-like in a client account. DWP simply have to say and it shall be done.
It really wouldn’t surprise me if other government departments have similar performance issues in their work. Maybe they are under-staffed, or under-skilled, I don’t know. But it shouldn’t be like this.
I’ll see whether my MP can shake things up a bit and I’ll be interested to hear whether he has experienced similar issues from other constituents.
And have you had similar experiences?
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