Employment and Support Allowance inquiry
Closed
What the inquiry looked at
“Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) is a benefit paid to people who have limited capability to work owing to disability of illness. It is administered by the Department for Work and Pensions. Since 2011, the government has been transferring people onto ESA from other previous benefits. A recent National Audit Office report found that an estimated 70,000 people had not been paid the full amount of ESA that they were entitled to. On average, people have been underpaid by £5,000, leaving the Department with a total of £340 million owed to claimants. In order to fix the problem, the Department has tasked about 400 of its staff with reviewing 300,000 ESA cases. It told the NAO that it expects to pay up to £830 million more in ESA by 2023 than it originally expected, even though eligible claimants will only be compensated for previous underpayments from 21 October 2014. The Committee will ask representatives from the Department for Work and Pensions how the error came about, why it took so long to uncover, and how it will ensure it does not happen again. The Committee will also ask whether the Department is doing enough to support ESA claimants and make sure those who are entitled to benefits receive all they are owed.”
The committee's words, from the inquiry page on parliament.uk ↗.
What it found
Employment and Support Allowance is supposed to help those in need. Yet a major error by the Department for Work and Pensions has resulted in an estimated 70,000 people being underpaid for years. Those affected have lost out on an average of £5,000 each. It is appalling that over 20,000 of those most in need are owed around £11,500 and some as much as £20,000. This unacceptable and entirely avoidable situation stems from multiple failures on the part of the Department. It failed to design a process that reflected its own legislation. It failed to subject that process to proper scrutiny. It failed to listen to its own staff, claimants, or external stakeholders and experts who told it things were going wrong and that it needed to slow down. And it failed to act even when it was painfully obvious that it was underpaying a significant number of people, taking over six years to take the necessary corrective action.
The Department is now finally paying arrears but it is only paying claimants some of the benefit they have missed out on. It is not planning to pay any compensation to reflect the lost value of passported benefits such as NHS prescriptions, dentistry treatment and free school meals.
There is clearly much more to be done to right this wrong. We encourage the Department to act swiftly, decisively and comprehensively to address the harm caused by this mistake and, more broadly, to give much greater priority to correcting benefit underpayments to vulnerable people.
What the government said
No government response is linked to this report.
How the inquiry ran
Each dot is a dated item listed on this page, from the inquiry's opening on 16 April 2018 to 31 January 2019.
- Oral evidence 21 May 2018
- Report 18 Jul 2018
- Correspondence 2 letters
What it recommended
The committee's recommendations are not listed here yet. Read them in 55th Report - Employment and Support Allowance ↗ on parliament.uk.
Evidence
Oral evidence sessions 1
- 21 May 2018No witnesses recordedparliament.uk ↗