A senior MP has warned of a culture of complacency at the Department for Work and Pensions.
Work and Pensions Select Committee chair Debbie Abrahams has said in a letter to DWP permanent secretary Sir Peter Schofield that there has been “some constructive change to the culture in your department” but the committee believes that this is “incremental and too slow”.
“Fundamentally, we believe that the department is failing to put the needs of vulnerable people first, that it is unwilling to learn from its mistakes and that it shows a lack of urgency to bring about change,” she said in a letter published on Wednesday.
“Until the department changes its culture, it will always struggle to build trust with the people it is meant to serve.”
Abrahams, whose letter follows an appearance from Schofield in front of the committee on 21 January, said “a culture of complacency is most apparent in DWP’s response to its mistakes”.
She said the committee raised several issues with Schofield at the session where DWP had made mistakes, noting that administering welfare for millions of people is a complex and challenging task, and “mistakes will happen”.
“However, when things go wrong, we expect the department to accept its faults, swiftly provide redress and to learn from its errors,” Abrahams said. “The department has shown repeated inadequacy in its response to mistakes and a lack of urgency when it comes to righting wrongs.”
Abrahams noted that Schofield had told the committee last month that DWP has “a great track record of putting right when we get things wrong”. Abrahams said she disagrees, pointing to the carer’s allowance overpayments scandal as an example.
The review concluded that DWP had “failed to demonstrate the ministerial and senior focus needed to resolve these persistent injustices, and reform Carer’s Allowance to implement its core purposes in the modern world”.
Soon after the publication of the review, The Guardian reported on an internal blogpost by a DWP director general that said only a small number of people were affected by DWP’s mistake and blamed individual carers for overpayments.
Abrahams said this “indicates that a member of your senior team doesn’t accept the findings of the Sayce Review (although the government has), which raises questions about the senior team as a whole under your leadership”.
“It undermines the sincerity of your apology and efforts to rebuild trust,” Abrahams added.
“Moreover, I am concerned that these attitudes may be more widespread, and indicative of a culture within the department that blames claimants for errors and fails to recognise the needs of vulnerable people.”
Abrahams said she asked Schofield directly about this during the evidence session, but he “did not respond directly and did not address the issue of DWP culture”.
The letter asks Schofield to respond in writing to the following questions: how do you explain the failures of departmental culture that contributed to carers allowance overpayments? And what action will you be taking in your senior team to address the evident attitudinal issues?"
Abrahams said the failure to fix issues with carers allowance overpayments “since at least 2019” makes it “difficult to have confidence” in Schofield’s commitment to rectify DWP’s mistakes.
The scandal saw tens of thousands of carers hit with overpayment notices after breaching the earnings limit, often by a very small amount. In many cases, DWP did not identify the overpayments until months or years later, and in some cases, carers were threatened with criminal prosecution.
Back in 2019, a predecessor committee report into overpayments concluded that it was “unacceptable that the department has stuck its head in the sand” and that the perm sec’s refusal to apologise was “profoundly disappointing”.
At the time, the department said it was “determined” to address the shortcomings and had already introduced “a range of measures to become a stronger learning organisation”.
In last month’s session, Schofield, who has been DWP’s perm sec since 2018, apologised for a “mistake particularly on the issues around the guidance for those people who have fluctuating earnings”. He said: “We are going to put it right. We are building a team to do that.”
Abrahams’s letter says: “Given the previous assertions by DWP that it would fix carers allowance overpayments, I’m sure you can understand my scepticism about your most recent commitments.”
The letter asks him to set out in writing how he will ensure that the problems are “actually addressed this time, including how you will embed learnings from this experience across the organisation, and by when”.
Abrahams also asked Schofield to explain why the department disagrees with the Sayce Review’s finding that guidance on allowable expenses was also flawed.
The letter also raised concerns about the department’s response to the WASPI scandal. In December 2024, the government apologised for a 28-month delay in writing to women born in the 1950s about the increase to the state pension age from 60 to 65, but said it could not justify paying compensation. The then-pensions secretary Liz Kendall said she was “determined to learn all the lessons to ensure that this type of maladministration never happens again”.
Abrahams said this was a “golden opportunity for DWP to demonstrate its willingness to learn from its mistakes, improve its service and rebuild trust” and she was therefore “very worried to receive a letter from the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman expressing “serious concerns” about delays in developing DWP’s action plan to learn from the scandal.
In the session, Schofield said he was “surprised to see” the letter and thought he had reassured PHSO chief Paula Sussex by showing her a draft action plan. He said it was necessary to pause work on the action plan while ministers reconsidered the decision.
Abrahams said she could not “accept” this argument, adding that she would have “hoped that this would be a moment for reflection rather than defensiveness from the department”.
“Without the plan, we cannot properly scrutinise this work and are left without evidence of your commitment to change,” Abrahams added.
On 29 January, ministers announced they had once again concluded no compensation should be paid.
In another criticism, the Work and Pensions chair said the department’s efforts to improve safeguarding “are yet to demonstrate the seriousness that is required”. She said the decision to introduce safeguarding training but not make it mandatory “risks the appearance that you are paying only lip service to the need for systemic change”.
“I would have more confidence in the seriousness of your efforts to change the culture were you to make the training mandatory for all staff, regardless of their role within the organisation,” Abrahams said.
The letter also calls for more "ambition and urgency" on tackling error and fraud after Schofield told the committee that the Office for Budget Responsibility's projection of a 2.8% cross-welfare fraud-and-error rate for 2028-29 "is exactly what we want to get to".
It also says the plan to move to a new PIP case management system in 2029 is "too slow" and warns Schofield "will need to find a better solution that will help rebuild trust among PIP claimants now, not in three years’ time".
Abrahams asked for Schofield to respond to the letter by 18 February.
A DWP spokesperson said: “We remain firmly committed to improving our services for the millions of people who use them and we will ensure that where mistakes are made, we will continue to learn from them."
They added that the department "will respond to the letter in due course, addressing the points raised".