(Minister of State for
Disabled People, Health and Work): This Written
Statement is a further update to the House on progress in
correcting historic ESA underpayments and paying arrears.
The Department began work to assess cases in December 2017. For
that stage of the exercise we expect to review around 320,000
cases, of which around 105,000 are likely to be due arrears. We
now have a team of over 400 staff working through these cases and
have paid around £120m in arrears. We expect to complete the vast
majority of this part of the exercise by April 2019, and have to
date completed all cases where an individual is terminally ill
and responded to the review, thereby ensuring they receive due
priority.
The announcement in July, to pay cases back to the point of
conversion requires us to review an additional 250,000 cases, of
which we estimate around 75,000 could be due arrears. We will
undertake this work through the course of 2019. We now have a
team of over 400 staff working through these cases, with a
further 400 due to join the team through October and November,
and will be assigning more staff to review the additional 250,000
cases. This will enable us to complete this important activity at
pace.
The Department is publishing an ad hoc statistical publication
today setting out further detail on the progress it has made in
processing cases and revised estimates of the impacts of this
exercise, including details of the number of claimants due
arrears and the amounts likely to be paid. This will be published
on Gov.uk.
There are currently around 2.3million working-age people on
Employment and Support Allowance. In 2018/19 £54 billion will be
been spent on benefits to support disabled people and people with
health conditions this year which is over 6% of all Government
spending and a record high.
