§ Mr. Evansasked the Paymaster General how many claims were made against the Department of Employment for non-payment or underpayment of benefit in 1985; what was the total amount of money involved; how many claims were unsuccessful; and how much money, in terms of payments not made, was saved.
§ Mr. LangQueries made by benefit claimants about non-payment or under-payment of unemployment benefit are usually decided locally and are not centrally recorded. However, claimants who have been disallowed benefit by independent adjudication officers have a right of appeal to a Social Security Appeal Tribunal. In the first six months of 1985 approximately 17,000 such appeals were made and nearly 6,000 were unsuccessful. Information is not yet available for the second half of 1985.
The amount of benefit involved is not quantifiable.