Benefit balls-up

Mistakes in under-paying benefits claims could cost up to half a billion pounds to put right, the BBC has learned. The errors identified by the Department for Work and Pensions affect the main sickness benefit, the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).

ESA is paid to about 2.5 million people.  Labour introduced ESA in 2008, to replace incapacity benefit.  They claimed the change would move a million people off sickness benefit and save the Treasury £7bn. The coalition embraced the benefit with open arms, again hoping to save money by moving people off incapacity benefit and onto ESA faster than planned. Little has changed. Back in 2006/07, 2.7 million people were receiving the main sickness benefit at a cost of £12bn. In this financial year, ministers estimate 2.4 million people will get ESA - at a cost of £15bn. For claimants, the changes have meant undergoing health assessments to prove their illnesses, which some say has created stress and anxiety. Mistakes began in 2011 when the government started moving benefits recipients onto ESA - which is paid to those with long-term health conditions that are not going to improve.

Frank Field, chairman of the Commons work and pensions select committee, said the problem was on a scale of "historic proportions". He said: "I'm still gobsmacked at the size and the nature and the extent and the coverage of people that have been wrongly impoverished by the department getting it wrong."