Retired teacher's pension stopped as provider refuses to believe she is not dead

[OJFord]

> The DfE told the Guardian that once a possible match has been identified, the beneficiary may be asked to confirm that they are not the same deceased stranger every 12 months since the system, administered by Capita, does not log a disproved link.

Well there's your problem. Crapita, I mean.

And yet it's completely possible:

> After the Guardian queried the process, the DfE said it would make an exception and decouple McGrath’s name from the deceased’s so that she would not be contacted about it again.

Even if that was entirely manual...

[TehCorwiz]

"After enough public backlash we've fixed the problem for this one person. We hope everyone stops bothering us so we can continue to not fix the problem because denying benefits is profitable to us."

[mrmanner]

> letters make no mention of a deadline or the fact that their payments will cease if they do not respond within 28 days. A spokesperson said this was “to avoid causing upset”

This is the most stereotypically British thing I’ve heard this year

[Snow_Falls]

It's also a blatant lie, the system is broken and the government allows social services to be so bad because it wants to spend as little money on them as possible.

[peterleiser]

This whole story reminds me of the movie Brazil.

[methou]

Every year my grand parents have to take a photo of themselves holding a recent newspaper with date clearly visible to whoever is managing their pension.

After the internet and apps plaged the world, now they have to download an app then tilt node and wink to the camera to prove that they are alive. ("If you cannot use a phone, ask your children")

I have mixed feeling about this, it's hard to say this is not degenerating, and no one's happy with doing this, but seems like there's no better idea that scales.

[samus]

What about a public registry of deaths that can notify parties with justified interest (pension providers, maybe insurances and banks) about such events? That should work for domestic cases at least. Tracking deaths for people living abroad in their retirement is more tricky I admit.

Maybe such a registry doesn't exist in the UK to begin with? Since it also doesn't have a residence registry.

Edit: my bad, it actually works too well and then they do a bad job at matching records. I should have read TFA first...

[madsbuch]

It is fun that this is even a problem in some parts of the world. In Denmark we absolutely know when people are dead and pension payments to deceased people is a non-issue.

[derivative7]

Is it so terrible to do a very simple procedure once a year to avoid fraud?

[hgomersall]

It's really simple. You just require that the death certificate is used to close down a pension[1]. Sure people can continue to fraudulently claim a pension but at some point it's unsustainable and they'd be forced to fess up and they will be suitably prosecuted.

[1] https://docs.api.lev.homeoffice.gov.uk/life-event-verificati...

[paganel]

This is so degrading, I hate it with a passion that we've come to this.

[radiator]

> ... asked to confirm that they are not the same deceased stranger every 12 months since the system, administered by Capita, does not log a disproved link.

This is a bug in their system. Rather than fixing it, they prefer repeatedly and unashamedly asking old people whether they are dead.

[zimpenfish]

To be fair, there have been several stories (normally "world's oldest person!!!" type) where relatives have been claiming pensions and benefits for sometimes decades after the actual person died.

Whether the number of those stories and the amount of money involved is worth the hassle to the people not defrauding governments is left as an exercise to the reader...

[15457345234]

> administered by Capita

if you know

[cushpush]

>repeatedly and unashamedly asking old people whether they are dead.

Mortifying

[bananapub]

I mean, in a broader sense it isn't a bug. the government outsourced it to Capita explicitly so there's a responsibility gap into which people can fall and lose their money. it's not like these services suck and are hostile to normal people by accident - if the Powers That Be wanted it to not suck then they wouldn't structure systems like this.

[batch12]

Death comes for us all. Maybe they should come up with a way to confirm this for all of their beneficiaries.

[lloydatkinson]

This is par for the course with Crapita

[elashri]

This reminds me of one time I tried to get a birth certificate and I was asked a proof that I was born.

Just to make it clear. Not to prove I was born for those particular parents. It is born in general.

[withinboredom]

If you want to get technical and into some ships of Theseus nonsense, technically, anyone over the age of at least 10 was never born.

[mlrtime]

It's more that it is proof that you are who you say you are. I just recently had to order birth certificates from my state. They ask for at least 1 of many different types of proof.

For newborns, hospitals release a 'statement of facts' that allow you to order the birth certificate. YMMV.

[chokma]

Swiss pensions for foreigners are also only paid if the recipient proves they are alive once a year. My father had to sent proof of being alive for decades.

To be fair, it is much harder to verify this automatically if the recipient lives in another country.

[andrewaylett]

That's also different, as it's a known and deliberate process that -- I suspect -- has both a set expectation that the recipient will check in and an explicit reminder before payment is stopped.

It is reasonably easy for the pension provider in the case at hand to tell when someone dies. A bit too easy, some might say.

[teekert]

It’s sad and annoying but what an opportunity to call the pension provider and say: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

[eesmith]

That might add a bit of fun the first time. This is the fourth.

[voytec]

> vetting procedure that regularly checks pension beneficiaries against the death register to prevent ineligible payments. According to the Department for Education (DfE), which oversees Teachers’ Pensions, death register entries may be matched to scheme members even if personal details differ.

Well, that's dumb.

[karaterobot]

> She had fallen victim to a vetting procedure that regularly checks pension beneficiaries against the death register to prevent ineligible payments... the beneficiary may be asked to confirm that they are not the same deceased stranger every 12 months since the system, administered by Capita, does not log a disproved link.

As a consultant, I would be willing to provide a simple fix to this problem for a modest fee. I won't say what it is yet, but I am confident it would work.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Cue the Monty Python skit…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=grbSQ6O6kbs

[pettycashstash2]

No recourse to sue for mental anguish? This is like torturing someone to die. Hurry up please and die already etc

[thirkle]

I used to work on Capita's pension systems as my first ever job after uni. Hartlink is an absolutely dreadful system, coded in Progress 4GL.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenEdge_Advanced_Business_Lan...

Thankfully I have since moved on to greener pastures. Oddest thing about Capita is that they are able to recruit a lot of smart, competent young people, but then put them to work on maintaining the most awful systems.

[aaronmdjones]

"Huh, why is this even a difficult thing"

> the beneficiary may be asked to confirm that they are not the same deceased stranger every 12 months since the system, administered by Capita, does not log a disproved link

... and there it is. Crapita, the source of all woes, decided to do a just-good-enough job rather than a good job.

Come on. Even DVLA can handle the case where 2 (or more) people have the same first and last name, and middle initial, and date of birth, when issuing driving licences. They don't mix those up.

[nxobject]

Good to know that the keen eyes here found the key hint halfway through the article, at the end of a paragraph: _Capita_. Leeches on the public purse.

[sega_sai]

That's the same 'Capita' that had a breach last year: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/04/cyber-attac... -- Why am I not surprised...

[crimbles]

Barclays closed my mother’s bank accounts because they thought she had died. It was a “clerical error” ie someone had received a death certificate and processed it with about as much rigour as a 2 year old could muster.

They sorted it within 5 days though and paid out compensation and sent her a hamper as an apology. Hopefully they fired the moron who kicked off the process too.

At the end of the day this shit happens but this should trigger a full review and pause all destructive outcomes immediately as mitigation. But being Capita I doubt it will happen.

[jpc0]

> Hopefully they fired the moron who kicked off the process too.

God forbit you make such a grave mistake as reading a number off a piece of paper and typing it into a system incorrectly.

It's almost asif the interaction between the systems is the problem and not the human on the end...

It may even have been some sort of "AI" that happened to recognise a letter incorrectly.

It's quick to call for people tp be fired, not that you would ever make a simple mistake.

[emj]

> Hopefully they fired the moron

As you say things happens, so who are you going to fire? It mostly is just a bad coincidences that make these things happens, it mostly is not the guy committing the error who is at fault. I do not want to live in a society where you treat the administrative clerks like you imply.

[justinclift]

Sounds like there are some ex-Fujitsu or ex-Post Office staff working at Capita.

[mnw21cam]

No such thing is necessary. Capita are a "phenomenon" of their very own. The Fujitsu and Post Office managers probably learnt from Capita.

[jacquesm]

After the post office scandal you'd think that entities like these would think long and hard about their responsibilities towards the people they interact with.

[wildpeaks]

They have no incentive to do anything unless it costs them enough money.

[cushpush]

"I'm not dead yet!" - Monthy Python and Holy Grail

[bythreads]

Just shows how generally unfathomable weird it is that most of the world does not have a uuid for a person assigned at birth - like the nordics do

[mlrtime]

Like a SSN in the US?

Registering at birth is somewhat trivial outside some edge cases. How do you resign the SSN at death predictably and accurately? Then, do you trust access to this database from 3rd parties? It's turtles all the way down.

[Scarblac]

In the Netherlands it's not literally a UUID, but everybody does have a number.

[codetrotter]

> The DfE told the Guardian that once a possible match has been identified, the beneficiary may be asked to confirm that they are not the same deceased stranger every 12 months since the system, administered by Capita, does not log a disproved link.

Sounds like garbage software

[cornholio]

I love how an obvious bug that should have led to a rejection of the delivery of the system - or an emergency fix as per the support requirements these large contracts always come with - has instead transformed into official DfE policy.

That's just so typical of the newfangled digital bureaucracy: it's far easier to change the workflow than it is to fix the software.

[mytailorisrich]

I love how they are trying to push their software issues onto people.

Once the person has provided proof once it is the DfE's problem to keep track of that and there is no obligation to keep providing it.

At some point, to keep asking to prove something 'or else' may be construed as harassment in addition to being idiotic.

[midasuni]

It mentions crapita, surely you aren’t surprised?

[j7ake]

Ideally we should using technology to do what we intend to do.

Unfortunately the reality is that technology uses us and makes us do things we normally would consider stupid.

[persnickety]

Technology doesn't use us, we use technology. Then we make some other we do stupid things.

Too many times someone introduces technology to dilute responsibility for me to believe that such outcomes are typically unintentional. Technology totally does what people intend it to do, except the average person is on the receiving side of the whip.

[codegladiator]

Millions of families suffer every year