Thousands of claimants left with no money due to failings of contractor: report

Thousands of people in Britain, many of them vulnerable, were left for weeks without money to which they were entitled due to failings of a government contractor, a report highly critical of the government said Monday.

The contractor Concentrix failed to tell people details of suspicions they had that prompted welfare payments being stopped.

It emerged later some people they were alleged to be living with were actually dead, a report by a committee of MPs (members of parliament) revealed.

The British parliament's Work and Pensions Committee has published in a report detailing the response by the government's tax and revenues department, HMRC, into its contract with the agency Concentrix who operated the benefits scheme.

The committee was highly critical of both HMRC and its contractor for failings that left thousands of people without benefits to which they were entitled.

The government has accepted many of the recommendations for change put forward by the committee, said the report.

Of 59,000 claimants whose benefits were stopped or cut by Concentrix, 36,000 requested an appeal, said the report adding that 87 percent of the appeals were won.

The committee spoke of complex and demanding procedures which were daunting for claimants, with some not appealing even though their payments had been wrongly halted.

Committee chair, the MP Frank Field, said: "HMRC was right to fire its contractor, but many of the processes used by Concentrix were the same as those used by HMRC itself."

"For many claimants, particularly those who were unwell, lacked self-confidence or had caring responsibilities, the document-heavy process of challenging a wrong decision by Concentrix was surely prohibitively daunting," said Field. Endit