The DWP have been caught underpaying claimants again – when will they be held to account?

When ministers appear before parliament to answer for their department’s conduct, the scrutiny they are put under during their sparsely attended questions amounts to far less than what ESA and PIP claimants endure during the assessment process

A “culture of indifference” is how the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) described the government’s handling of changes to disability benefits that have left some of the nation’s most vulnerable people missing out on thousands upon thousands of pounds.

Most of us in Britain’s disabled community will have greeted that with a weary shrug and a “tell us something we don’t know”.

But let’s park up the wheelchair, the sticks, and the other equipment we use to get by for a moment and consider what the latest damning report into the conduct of the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) is all about.

Penned by the powerful PAC, it covers the DWP’s abject failure to act on warnings that it was underpaying an estimated 70,000 people who transferred to Employment & Support Allowance (ESA) from other benefits over seven years.

For those not in the know, ESA is paid to those whose ability to work is severely impacted by their conditions. It is extremely difficult to get, and is separate to, but often confused with, the Personal Independence Payment (PIP).

The administration of the latter has also created scandal, but it is an entirely separate benefit that is intended to help with the extra costs incurred through disability.

The influential cross party PAC said on the subject of ESA that an “unacceptable and entirely avoidable” situation was created through multiple failures by the DWP, including not listening to what claimants, experts, support organisations and even its own staff have been saying.

Again, plus ça change, tell us something we don’t know.

The issue was also raised in a report by the National Audit Office four months ago. It put the average under payment at around £5,000, a hell of a lot of money of if you haven’t got much of it, but said some could be owed as much as £20,000. “Unacceptably slow,” is how it described the government’s response.

For the record, the DWP is intending to pay back £340m in total but because arrears are only being accounted for as far back as 21 October 2014, the date of a legal tribunal ruling, a further £150m will be left on the shelf.

Does that all sound rather complicated? Here’s something that’s not: There have been a long list of highly critical reports by parliamentary committees and other bodies into the DWP’s conduct. Even the UN has had a go, with a scathing report on the UK government’s approach towards disability rights that made more than 60 recommendations.

None of them appear to have had the slightest impact on the way it does things.

You can picture the scene at its offices: “What’s that Perkins, another report?”

“Yes Sir Humphrey. It’s just come in and it’s pretty rum.”

“They all are m’lad. Chuck it on the fire and have someone bring the drinks over, would you?”

Groups fighting for the interests of disabled people have to try and be polite in public. In private, it’s not uncommon to have to watch their people tearing their hair out with frustration at the mere mention of the DWP. Speaking to it is, for them, like speaking to a brick wall.

Kamran Malik, the chief executive of Disability Rights UK, summed it up perfectly when he said: “‘From the National Audit Office to parliamentary select committees, from Personal Independence Payment to Universal Credit, the litany of chaos doesn’t seem to register with the Department at all.”

Should this complacency come as any great surprise?

When ministers appear before parliament to answer for their department’s conduct, the scrutiny they are put under during their sparsely attended questions amounts to far less than what ESA and PIP claimants endure during the assessment process.

It doesn’t matter how poorly they perform, and how little they do, they can feel secure in the knowledge that they’ll keep their ministerial cars, red boxes, and copper bottomed pensions for as long as they want them, all the more so given the state of the current government.

And so the DWP rolls on and over disabled Britons like a slow moving but heavily armoured tank. I’m thinking of the ones from the dying days of the Great War of 1914-1918 that crushed everything in their path, their armour incapable of being pierced by anything available to the soldiers of the time.

The sort of behaviour characterised by the steady stream of critical reports into the DWP ought to create an uproar. The sort of treatment meted out to disabled people in this country ought to shame us all. It ought be seen as an affront to a civilised society,

However, shackled to a government led by Jacob Rees-Mogg and his chums, can this country really be considered “civilised” any longer?