Recommendation 34

The Department has estimated that 51% of ESA claimants, who are likely to include some of the more vulnerable claimants due to migrate to UC, would have been better off on UC by around £130 a month on average.69 In June 2022, it forecast that there were about 1.2 million people receiving ESA, of whom about 600,000 would have a higher entitlement on UC, about 100,000 would experience no change, and 500,000 would have a lower entitlement on UC and would need transitional protection to top up their payments.70 We asked whether this meant that some 600,000 claimants are losing their entitlement to extra benefit payments every month until 2028, and the Department confirmed this was the case. It highlighted that the savings arose from the fact that ESA claimants who would have been better off on UC would not now be transferred until 2028.71