Mr Q's complaint about Jobcentre Plus and the Child Benefit Office
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In the case of Mr Q, Jobcentre Plus’s efforts to inform widowed fathers that they could claim bereavement benefits, following a change in the law, were inadequate. As a result, Mr Q remained unaware that he was eligible for widowed parent’s allowance and so did not make a claim for over four years.
Background to the complaint
Before 9 April 2001, bereavement benefits were only available to married women whose husbands had died. Following a change in the law, widowed mother’s allowance was replaced by the new widowed parent’s allowance from 9 April 2001, which was payable to widows and widowers alike. One of the eligibility criteria was that applicants had to be entitled to child benefit for at least one qualifying child. Claims could only be backdated three months at most.
In general, unless asked, there is no onus on Jobcentre Plus to inform people that they may be eligible to claim a particular benefit. This is not the case, however, when a change in statutory provisions gives rise to new entitlements. In such cases, departments should act reasonably in taking such steps as may be practicable to identify those with an entitlement and either pay them that entitlement or invite them to claim. This is set out in a 1979 report by the then Civil Service Department, Legal Entitlements and Administrative Practices. In the lead-up to the April 2001 changes, Jobcentre Plus considered how to tell existing widowers about the changes. Most of the papers relating to this work have been destroyed but it is clear that Jobcentre Plus decided first that they would conduct a ‘scan’ of the child benefit database to try to identify existing widowers whom they would then write to, and secondly that they would run a publicity campaign.
Informing widowers of the April 2001 changes – Jobcentre Plus’s publicity campaign
Jobcentre Plus considered a variety of options, including coverage in national, women’s and regional press; advertorials and advertisements in local and regional press; national press advertising; and a dedicated leaflet distributed in the wider community. Although they thought about how best to target men, we saw no evidence that they gave any consideration to the question of how best to target publicity to bereaved men. The extent of the final publicity campaign was unclear, but Jobcentre Plus were able to provide us with only 21 press cuttings for the 8 months following the change in the law that mentioned it, and of those several were reports of a charity’s statement warning that there had been insufficient publicity. In March 2001 another charity, which offers help to bereaved people, wrote to the Secretary of State about the ‘minimal publicity for the new benefits’, and expressed concern that without publicity some potential claimants were unlikely to claim the benefits, particularly men with dependent children who had been widowed for some time. There is no record of any reply.
Informing widowers of the April 2001 changes – the Child Benefit Office scan
The child benefit database was not designed to identify widowers and so the scan was not a straightforward exercise. A first scan looked for claims with a sole male payee with a cross-reference to another child benefit number (the original claim would usually have been made by the children’s mother). A second scan then checked those cross-referenced accounts for notes indicating that the person concerned had died (by searching for a special note or the words ‘died’, ‘death’ or ‘deceased’. A third scan again looked for claims with sole male payees, and this time checked those claims for the same indications that a person had died. The results were checked and then letters inviting the men to claim were sent out. The Child Benefit Office told us that they identified at an early stage the risk that some bereaved fathers might be missed, and said that Jobcentre Plus had accepted that risk. They could not provide any further details as the relevant papers had been destroyed.
Mr Q’s claim for widowed parent’s allowance
Mr Q’s wife died in February 1998. He then took responsibility for bringing up their son, for whom Mrs Q had claimed child benefit. He was given leaflets from various sources (including the Child Benefit Office), but he could see that he was not entitled to widowed mother’s allowance and so did not make a claim. Subsequently, Mr Q was not sent the letter about widowed parent’s allowance. Although his child benefit computer record should have been cross-referenced to Mrs Q’s account (and so picked up by the scan), it later transpired that the scan had not recognised his record as being that of a widower because the cross-reference had been noted in a wrong section of his record.
In November 2005 Mr Q saw a television programme which mentioned the possibility of widowers claiming widowed parent’s allowance. He claimed the same day and was awarded the allowance backdated for three months. Mr Q appealed against the backdating decision, partly on the grounds that he had not been made aware of the fact that widowers could claim the allowance. Jobcentre Plus reconsidered, but did not change, their decision. However, the decision-maker asked if it would be appropriate to make Mr Q an ex gratia payment on the grounds that he had not been invited to claim when the law changed. Mr Q’s subsequent appeal was disallowed in March 2006.
Jobcentre Plus’s consideration of an ex gratia payment for Mr Q
In response to enquiries from Jobcentre Plus, the Child Benefit Office said that they could not confirm if they had sent Mr Q a widowed parent’s allowance claim form because no clerical records of the scan results or the letters sent had been kept. They also said that none of the criteria which might have identified him as a widower was shown on Mr Q’s child benefit account and so he would not have been identified by the scan. In October 2006 Jobcentre Plus refused Mr Q an ex gratia payment, saying that it was the Child Benefit Office’s view that ‘the onus remained with the individual customer to make a claim to benefit; the basis being that the change in provision was widely advertised and information about [sic] was freely available to the general public. I surmise therefore that there was no mandatory obligation to invite and consequently no departmental error. It follows that a special payment cannot be made’.
What we investigated
Mr Q complained to the Ombudsman, in November 2006, that the Child Benefit Office’s scan had failed to identify him as eligible to claim widowed parent’s allowance, and that Jobcentre Plus had not fully considered all the circumstances of his case when deciding his request for an ex gratia payment. He said he had missed out on about £27,000.
In investigating Mr Q’s complaint, we took account of the Legal Entitlements and Administrative Practices report, the Public Record Office’s Records Management Standards published in January 1998 and our Principles of Good Administration. We considered whether Jobcentre Plus’s actions were in line with the standards they establish.
What our investigation found
Although the child benefit scan was fairly successful (in that it used a database, which was not intended for the purpose, to identify some 11,688 widowers to whom information was sent about changes to bereavement benefits), there were several classes of widowers whom the scan could never have identified, of which cases such as that of Mr Q, where the Child Benefit Office had misfiled the cross-reference to his wife’s previous record, was just one. We found that Jobcentre Plus should reasonably have known there was every chance that potentially significant numbers of eligible widowers would not be identified by the scan.
It is fair to say that bereaved fathers make up a group which would be particularly difficult to reach through a publicity campaign, and this should have been reflected in Jobcentre Plus’s publicity plans. We could not see that there was a reasonable prospect that the campaign, as undertaken, would have sufficiently publicised the new entitlement so that those affected were aware of the benefit changes. The actions that Jobcentre Plus and the Child Benefit Office undertook between them did not meet the requirement to ‘… act reasonably in taking such steps as may be practicable to identify those with an entitlement’; and fell short of the need as set out in the Ombudsman’s Principles of Good Administration to act with regard for the rights of those concerned, taking account of established good practice. In this case, Jobcentre Plus should have been particularly aware of the importance of letting widowers know of their new entitlement because the law had been changed partly in response to a ruling by the Court of Human Rights that the previous discriminatory system violated widowers’ human rights.
In summary, we found that both the scan was inadequate and the publicity campaign insufficient to remedy the scan’s defects, and that Jobcentre Plus’s reliance on them to tell existing widowers about their new entitlements was maladministration.
Jobcentre Plus’s response to Mr Q’s request for an ex gratia payment was inadequate. Given that he would be deprived of his entitlement unless he made a claim, that he was in a vulnerable group whose human rights had been violated and that he would have no reason to make a claim unless informed about the changes to the law, the onus was squarely on Jobcentre Plus to try to inform him (and others like him) of his new eligibility. Part of ‘Getting it right’ (another of the Principles of Good Administration) is that proper decision-making should give due weight to all relevant considerations, ignore irrelevant ones and balance the evidence appropriately. Jobcentre Plus failed to do this, and so their decision to refuse Mr Q’s request was taken with maladministration.
Neither Jobcentre Plus nor the Child Benefit Office created and maintained reliable and usable records as evidence of their activities. Disappointingly, neither body could provide us with comprehensive records relating to the matters investigated, as we would have expected in line with the Principles of Good Administration. This impacted considerably on our investigation of Mr Q’s complaint. This failure to keep sufficiently adequate records to ensure public accountability was further maladministration.
What has been the injustice to Mr Q? But for Jobcentre Plus’s maladministration, he would very probably have been told about the new widowed parent’s allowance in April 2001 and promptly made a claim, as he did when he found out about his entitlement in 2005. Thus, Mr Q lost out on widowed parent’s allowance between 9 April 2001 and 8 August 2005. He also suffered unnecessary delays in receiving a reply to his complaint because of the lack of adequate records.
We fully upheld Mr Q’s complaint and concluded our investigation in January 2009.
Outcome
To remedy the personal injustice to Mr Q, Jobcentre Plus paid him £28,130.92 (equivalent to the benefit he had lost), plus £5,899.01 interest; £500 for gross inconvenience; £250 for severe distress; and £75 costs. They also agreed to apologise to him. The Child Benefit Office agreed to make Mr Q a payment of £500 to recognise the impact of their mistake.
We also made the following recommendations, which were all accepted:
- Jobcentre Plus agreed to put in place arrangements to ensure that if other bereaved men complain they were not informed of the benefit changes in the lead-up to April 2001, the matters rehearsed in our investigation are taken into account when addressing those complaints and deciding whether to make an ex gratia payment.
- Jobcentre Plus agreed to consider what steps they can reasonably take to identify any other men in a position similar to that of Mr Q and to remedy any injustice they may have suffered as a result of the matters we investigated.
- Jobcentre Plus and the Child Benefit Office further agreed to consider whether any changes are appropriate to their record management policies or the way those policies are observed and adhered to, in order to ensure that their records can provide the basis for public accountability, such as through an investigation by the Ombudsman.
