Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department takes to ensure that claimants who are found to be eligible for employment support allowance but don't receive payments due to their household income, are encouraged to continue to apply to make sure that they receive their National Insurance contributions.

Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) the “new style” benefit is solely based on the claimant’s national insurance (NI) contributions. The income-related strands of the benefit have been removed. This means that New Style ESA (NS ESA) can be paid alongside Universal Credit (UC), where appropriate.

Claimants who don’t qualify for UC, due to the level of their household income, might still qualify for NS ESA.

If eligible for NS ESA, a claimant will be awarded a Class 1 NI credit for each complete benefit week that the benefit is in payment. A benefit week runs from Sunday to Saturday.

Where there is no entitlement to NS ESA, a person may still be entitled to NI credits provided they continue to meet the eligibility conditions.

Information about claiming NI credits is included in the decision letter sent to the claimant informing them that they are not entitled to ESA. It is also available on Gov.UK.