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UK NEWS£73M BENEFITS PAID TO DEAD
James Purnell came under fire from Tories Sunday March 8,2009 By Brendan AbbottMINISTERS were accused of incompetence last night after it emerged that £73million in state benefits was paid out last year to dead people.
The benefits included disability
allowances, winter fuel payments and even Christmas bonuses. Ministers admit
that at least £27million of the money will never be recovered. In thousands of other cases the
Government has tried to claw back the cash from grieving relatives. The Tories accused Work and
Pensions
Secretary James Purnell of presiding over a culture of waste and claimed his
department was not “fit for purpose”. Shadow Work and Pensions
Secretary
Theresa May said: “James Purnell is meant to be focusing on getting people back
to work but he can’t even get his own house in order – what signal does this
send out? [> “It is absolutely ridiculous that thousands of people struggling on
low incomes are missing out on the benefits they are entitled to whilst the
Government is paying out millions of pounds each year to dead people.” Pensions made up the bulk of the
payments, with £13.2million paid out to 83,661 pensioners who had died. Benefits minister Kitty Ussher
said the
errors “normally” occurred because the department was not
notified of a death
in time to halt
payments. [> It now receives automatic electronic notification of
all deaths from the Office of National Statistics. She said the department had a duty to try to
recover the money but added: “We seek to do this as sensitively as possible,
taking into account the fact that this will be a stressful time.”
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