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7.29 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Angela Eagle): The Under-Secretary of State for Social Security, my hon. Friend the Member for City of York (Mr. Bayley), wrote to the hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) on 23 February and asked that his condolences be conveyed to Mrs. Smith over the death
of her husband, a point in the letter that the hon. Gentleman chose not to quote. I should be grateful if he would also convey my condolences to Mrs. Smith.
The hon. Gentleman has written a number of letters on this matter and I will respond to the points that he raised tonight and those in his latest letter dated 28 March. If there are any other points at issue which are not covered, I shall of course write to him again.
Mrs. Smith's husband tragically died in June of last year. She subsequently claimed widow's benefit. She is not entitled to widow's pension because she is aged less than 45 years and there is no entitlement to widowed mother's allowance because she does not have dependent children. As the hon. Member for North Thanet acknowledged, there is no issue in that respect.
I want to deal with the issue of the widow's payment. It is a tax-free lump sum payment of £1,000 paid to widows who are under state pension age, or whose late husband was not in receipt of retirement pension. Entitlement is based on the late husband's national insurance contribution record. Widow's payment is intended to provide immediate support to enable a widow to adjust to her changed financial circumstances and to help her deal with unexpected costs immediately following bereavement.
There have always been time limits for claiming widows' benefit. It has always been recognised that a reasonable period ought to be allowed in which a person can make her claim, and she should not be penalised for a short period of delay. The current rule, again as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, is three months. Unfortunately, Mrs. Smith's claim for widow's payment was out of time by some six weeks and was therefore disallowed. The nub of the hon. Gentleman's complaint is that it should be possible to extend the three months time limit if there are good reasons for doing so. There is no disagreement over the fact that Mrs. Smith's claim fell outside the time limit. The problem relates to the fact that the time limit is absolute.
The history of the widow's payment is simple. It was introduced in 1988 by the previous Administration to replace a benefit known as widow's allowance. The widow's allowance had been a weekly benefit, but the widow's payment was a one-off payment of £1,000. It was never up-rated. Hon. Members may be aware that we are about to replace it with a bereavement payment, which we plan to introduce in April 2001. Bereavement payment will be a tax-free lump sum of £2,000 and will be available equally to men and women. Entitlement conditions will be the same as for widow's payment.
At the time--widow's payment was introduced in 1988--an absolute time limit of 12 months existed for the purposes of making a claim. The back-dating was automatic. There was no need to show good cause for a delay in making a claim. Hon. Members may recall that the good cause test for late claim applied in the case of a number of other, mainly income-related, benefits. It did not apply in the case of contributory benefits such as retirement pension or widows' benefits, for which slightly more generous rules were considered appropriate because they were contributory benefits. The difference amounts to the fact that if there were no good cause for a delay in claiming one of the income-related benefits, there was no
back-dating at all, whereas for the contributory benefits there was a 12-month time limit, whatever the reason for the delay.
Strictly speaking, for the contributory benefits it was not really a case of back-dating. Rather, a claimant had 12 months in which to make a claim. Twelve months was the period prescribed in primary legislation. Apart from exceptional cases in which a husband's body had not been recovered or identified, or where the woman was unaware of his death, the 12-month limit was also absolute. A claim outside the absolute limit will inevitably fail.
Then in April 1997, the previous Administration replaced the 12-month time limit with a three-month time limit. It remained an absolute rule, as it still is. There is no statutory basis for any payment to be made if, as in this case, the claim is made after the time limit has expired. There are internal rules about ex gratia payments that can be made if an individual is given clearly erroneous official information which results in loss of benefit. That was not the case. Officials in the Benefits Agency local office telephoned Mrs. Smith on 22 November to find out whether there was any possible way in which she could be helped because there had been official misinformation. They established, however, that there had been no official contact with her on the issue of the widow's payment until the out-of-time claim was received.
I appreciate very much that in Mrs. Smith's case there were good reasons for the delay in claiming benefit. The circumstances of her husband's awful death meant that there had to be an inquest. It was not her fault that the inquest was adjourned and that, by the time that it eventually took place on 12 October, the three months had elapsed. I also appreciate the fact that at a time of traumatic loss, a widow may not be best placed emotionally or otherwise to make the business of claiming benefit the first priority. The hon. Gentleman may think that that is a cliche, but I keep saying it. In the DSS we deal with many tragic cases, but I repeat that there has never been any discretion as to whether the prescribed period of three months, or the previously prescribed 12 months, could be extended. As that is an absolute rule, the reason for the delay is immaterial.
It may be asked why we do not introduce a good cause provision, which would help to avoid such situations. The problem with the good cause rule was that it had become so overlaid with case law that decision-makers found it extremely difficult and time-consuming to wade through the decision-making process. A wholly disproportionate amount of time was taken to make such decisions, and there was still inconsistency and uncertainty about the outcome.
The previous Administration, of whom the hon. Gentleman was an enthusiastic supporter, therefore replaced that system with a set of specified circumstances which left little room for doubt whether a claim could or could not be backdated.
There is an argument that the three-month rule should be extended. That would not help Mrs. Smith, as it was not in place at the time of her husband's death. Unfortunately, it is in the nature of things that wherever a fence is erected, people fall on the wrong side of it.
If we extended the claim period to six months, some people might still lose out by the odd week or two by not making timely claims.
The information on backdating is contained in leaflets written in plain English and widely available in Benefits Agency offices, post offices, libraries and general practitioners' surgeries. To complicate the rules or introduce new rules to differentiate between different benefits would cause the re-appearance of the problems that the previous Administration sought to iron out by introducing the new rules.
Mrs. Smith appealed against the decision that she had been given. The appeal tribunal subsequently upheld the decision, as the hon. Gentleman said. Appeal tribunals are independent of the Department. It is essential that they are independent and that they can reach decisions in individual cases by applying the law to the facts of the case. It would be entirely inappropriate for me or any other Minister to seek to interfere in the decision of a tribunal. In all the changes that we have recently introduced to the way in which appeals are handled, we have been careful to ensure that the independence of the tribunal has been safeguarded.
Mrs. Smith's difficulty lay in the fact that some misinformation may have been given to her by her solicitor over the telephone. First, it appears that she may have been told that she could not claim widow's payment until a death certificate was to hand. If so, that information was wrong. The claim should have been made without delay, as the information leaflets for widow's benefit make clear. Had Mrs. Smith contacted the local office, she would have received confirmation of the message contained in the leaflet that any delay in claiming may affect entitlement.
If a claim had been made on time, there may have been a delay in payment while the evidence of death was obtained, but there would have been no question of breaching time limits.
Secondly, it appears that Mrs. Smith was not advised that she could have applied for an interim death certificate. It seems to me that on both of these points the complaint ought to be made against the solicitors.
On the wider issues that this sad case raises, let me say that we aim to modernise the delivery of social security.
Mr. Gale:
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Angela Eagle:
We have introduced a range of changes to the ways in which decisions on social security claims and child support are made. We have made it easier for clients--
Mr. Gale:
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Angela Eagle:
No. I am in the middle of replying to the hon. Gentleman.
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