Mrs Q's complaint about the Department for Work and Pensions and the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency
Jump to
The Department did not tell Mrs Q that she might be entitled to a war widow’s pension. It took more than 20 years for that to be put right.
Background
In 1987 Mr and Mrs Q visited their local Department of Social Security (DSS) office (now the Department for Work and Pensions – DWP), as Mr Q wanted to apply for his retirement pension. He provided details of his service in the Merchant Navy and of his war disablement pension, which had ceased in the 1960s. Sadly, Mr Q passed away in the summer and in July Mrs Q visited the office to ask about her entitlement to benefits. Officials told her about widow’s state retirement pension, but not about war widow’s pension. (At this time, war pensions were administered by DSS. Responsibility moved to the Ministry of Defence in 2001. The Service Personnel and Veterans Agency (the Agency) was created in 2007.)
Mrs Q said that it was not until 1994, when she read a newspaper article about war disability pensions, that she realised she could claim a war widow’s pension. She duly made a claim, and was awarded a war widow’s pension from 30 March 1994. Mrs Q told us that she telephoned the Agency regularly over the following five years, trying to get the award backdated to the date of her husband’s death. She said she was continuously fobbed off and told ‘if we give to one – we have to give to all’. In January 2000 Mrs Q telephoned the Agency. They said there were no grounds to backdate her claim because Mr Q was not in receipt of a war disablement pension at the date of his death, and the onus had been on Mrs Q to make a claim. They also thought that unless she had specifically asked about a war widow’s pension, her local office would probably not have offered her any advice.
In June Mrs Q’s Member of Parliament asked the Agency why they had not backdated Mrs Q’s award to 1987. The Agency replied that they were unable to backdate her claim. They also said they had taken reasonable measures over the years to make information about war pensions available to the public; Mrs Q’s lack of knowledge was not a good enough reason to backdate her claim.
Over the next five years Mrs Q contacted the Agency many times, asking them to look into the possibility that she had been misdirected in 1987 and to consider backdating her award. She also asked to appeal against the start date of her award. On each occasion the Agency replied saying that the responsibility for claiming rested with the individual. Furthermore, their decision on the start date did not carry a right of appeal because it had been made before 2001 (before 9 April 2001 there was no legal provision for an individual to appeal against the commencement date of awards), and although they had reviewed their original decision in 2000 and found it to be correct, they had not reviewed their decision since.
Mrs Q telephoned the Agency in July 2005 asking to appeal against the start date of her award. They replied that they did not accept that she had a right of appeal; however, the Pensions Appeal Tribunal had the authority to determine whether that was the case. In January 2006 the Agency sent their papers to the Tribunal explaining their position. The President of the Tribunal promptly wrote back, pointing out that Mrs Q had the right of appeal against any review decision made after April 2001, since which time both she and her Member of Parliament had repeatedly asked for a review of the refusal to backdate. He directed that Mrs Q’s appeal be heard by the Tribunal, which had jurisdiction to consider whether she had a right of appeal. The Tribunal heard Mrs Q’s appeal in April 2006. They decided that the matter was within their jurisdiction, and concluded that Mrs Q’s award should be backdated to the date of her husband’s death. The Agency subsequently paid £26,209.76 to Mrs Q, plus interest.
Mrs Q then asked the Agency to consider paying her compensation for the distress and inconvenience they had caused her. The Agency said they were unable to consider a payment for distress without medical evidence. Mrs Q was very unhappy about being asked for medical evidence. In one letter to the Agency she wrote:
‘I find it impossible to contemplate that someone who fought for justice for so many years could not fail to be affected by the experiences … met with such indifference, intransigence, sometimes even hostility and even rudeness … multiplied by the years it took for resolution. How is it possible not to suffer distress, trauma and anguish after so many knock‑backs? … I discussed my problems with no‑one … I think it is an insult to expect someone of my years … to have to prove what you are asking.’
The Agency maintained their position. Mrs Q’s complaints were subsequently brought to the Ombudsman.
What we investigated
We investigated Mrs Q’s complaint that she had been misdirected in 1987, and her complaints about the Agency’s refusal to backdate her war widow’s pension, failure to provide her with appeal rights, and refusal to make a consolatory payment. Mrs Q told us that she experienced considerable inconvenience and severe stress in seeking to get her pension backdated, for which she wanted apologies and compensation.
What our investigation found
Misdirection in 1987
Given the information known to DSS about Mr and Mrs Q in 1987, they should have identified Mrs Q’s possible entitlement to a war widow’s pension. Their failure to give her an effective service, and their misdirection, denied her the chance to claim until 1994. That simple mistake had far‑reaching consequences for Mrs Q, who spent years pursuing something that should have been paid to her, as a matter of course, when her husband died.
Refusal to backdate the war widow’s pension
Although the Agency have no evidence that Mrs Q contacted them between 1995 and 2000, we were satisfied that she did raise the issue of backdating during this period. There is evidence that Mrs Q contacted the Agency in January 2000 and said that DSS had not told her about claiming a war widow’s pension, but the Agency did not investigate this. Their failure to understand and investigate Mrs Q’s complaint fell far short of the standard of ‘customer focus’ expected of public bodies.
What of the Agency’s refusal to backdate Mrs Q’s award or to allow her to appeal? Although they argued that she had not given them ‘sufficient’ grounds to review their decision before 2005, they did not explain why her claim of misdirection was not sufficient for them to look again at the start date of her award, nor did they explain what they might accept as ‘sufficient’. The Agency were not ‘open and accountable’. Nor did they act ‘fairly and proportionately’ when they declined either to allow Mrs Q to appeal or to allow a tribunal to determine for itself if an appeal was within its remit.
All of these shortcomings were so serious as to be maladministration.
Refusal to award a consolatory payment
We found no evidence that the Agency considered Mrs Q’s request for a payment for inconvenience, while the way they went about considering her claim for distress was inept. In particular, the Agency gave no proper thought to what their guidance had to say about ‘self‑evident distress’: namely, that it is not always necessary to obtain objective evidence if it is self‑evident that the error would have caused severe distress (which we believed to be the case here). The Agency did not act in keeping with the Principles for Remedy; they did not recognise the full impact of their errors on Mrs Q and they did not properly take into account her individual circumstances when deciding not to award her a payment for distress. Their strict application of their guidance lacked ‘customer focus’ and this, coupled with their failure to ‘put things right’, amounted to maladministration.
Consequences
If DSS had acted correctly in 1987 Mrs Q would not have had to manage without her war widow’s pension for almost seven years, nor would she have experienced the shock of finding out that she had previously been misdirected. It took a further twelve years for Mrs Q to receive all of the benefit she was due, during which time she endured frustration, stress and inconvenience and incurred unnecessary correspondence costs. The Agency’s insensitive request for medical evidence compounded her distress.
We upheld Mrs Q’s complaint.
Resolution
To recognise the injustice caused to Mrs Q and the time taken to resolve a very simple mistake, we recommended:
- that DWP and the Agency pay Mrs Q a total consolatory payment of £5,000; and
- that the Chief Executives of the Agency and of the Pension, Disability and Carers Service (on behalf of DWP) both send Mrs Q a written apology for the shortcomings we identified and for the effect their maladministration has had on her.
In view of the Agency’s repeated insistence for medical evidence to support a claim for severe distress, despite the wording of their own guidance, we also recommended that they:
- consider what action they can take to ensure that all staff authorised to consider such claims understand and exercise properly that discretion in line with the Ombudsman’s Principles for Remedy.
DWP and the Agency agreed to implement our recommendations.
