Employment and Support Allowance
Work and Pensions
Chris Grayling (Shadow Secretary of State for Work & Pensions, Work & Pensions; Epsom and Ewell, Conservative)
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
(1) how many and what proportion of new claimants on the new employment and support allowance are expected to claim (a) the employment portion and (b) the support portion when the new allowance is introduced;
(2) when the Government plans to announce the level of the new employment and support allowance; and what preliminary work his Department has carried out on the level of that allowance.
Anne McGuire (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Minister for Disabled People), Department for Work and Pensions; Stirling, Labour)
We are projecting a total of 567,000 new claims for 2008-09 as a whole. From October 2008 new customers will claim Employment and Support Allowance. Prior to that date incapacity benefit and income support will be available. These benefits will also be available after October 2008 to those protected by the linking rules.
The most severely disabled people claiming Employment and Support Allowance will be placed in the Support Group and will receive a higher rate of benefit. Early estimates are that around 10 per cent. of new customers to ESA will be in the Support Group. Over time, as proportionately more people in the work-related activity group leave the benefit, the proportion will rise to around 20 per cent. of the longer term ESA caseload.
We will be laying the main ESA regulations in the coming weeks and they will include the rates of the benefit. Analysis has been undertaken and an appropriate rate for ESA will be set in order to meet our aspirations for welfare reform.
Annotations
J M
Posted on 25 Feb 2008 7:20 am (Report this annotation)
Early estimates are that around 10% of new customers to ESA will be in the Support group?
The next year it will be another 10% then a further 10% the year after and so on for the next 20 years. It hardly seems likely that the equilibrium caseload for the Support group which contains the most severely sick and disabled will be as small as 20% of the total caseload. I would expect the total ESA caseload to evolve the same way as the IB caseload did so that equilibrium is reached after twenty years and not two. After twenty years I would expect to see a caseload made up of 50-70% of permanent sick and disabled people and a tabloid press howling that in 2011 there were only 750,000 people on ESA and now there are 2.5 million and they are staying on ESA for longer. "We've all gone soft, they must be faking it. Send these lazy daytime TV loafers back to work".
It really is time the government employed mathematicians. Either that or listend to them and stopped lying.