Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many individuals have been affected by the erroneous payment of employment and support allowance and jobseekers allowance in December 2018 and January 2019; and if she will make a statement.

Over the New Year period, some JSA and ESA claimants who expected to receive payments fortnightly, actually received two individual weekly payments, rather than a single fortnightly payment. All claimants received the correct amount of benefit and no payments were late (the first part of these ‘split’ payments were paid early).

In total there were 798,211 ESA claimants and 51,977 JSA claimants who received these ‘split’ payments (England, Scotland and Wales). The NI figures were 47,751 ESA and 3,059 JSA.

Operational colleagues were notified how best to support claimants and we also provided a link to key information on gov.uk.