Judith Collins MP
National Party Welfare Spokeswoman
25 January 2007

New Assurance Sought On Benefit Overpayments

National Party Welfare spokeswoman Judith Collins is seeking a fresh assurance from Work and Income about when it will deliver on a ‘guarantee’ that overpayments to the dead would be eliminated.

“The public will want to know if Work and Income has set itself a new time line for getting it right or whether, as reported, they’re just going to accept defeat.”

New figures show that 600 deceased beneficiaries wrongly received $380,000 from the taxpayer in the first 10 months of last year.

This is 17% up on the previous 12 months, despite a concrete promise that a new data matching system would prevent such overpayments.

“We all thought that Work and Income had accepted that for those who are left behind, receiving a letter in the post from the department demanding repayment is very distressing.”

Since September 2004, nearly $780,000 has been paid out to deceased beneficiaries after the four-week grace period had expired. Nearly half of that was between January and October last year.

“If the department couldn’t deal with this, then it should have said so at the time instead of making promises it could not keep. The Minister should seek an explanation for the misleading statements,” says Ms Collins.

ENDS

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