Social Security Benefits: Disqualification

(asked on 20th June 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many vulnerable claimants whose benefits claim was closed as a result of them not attending a Work Capability Assessment (a) received a home visit and (b) did not receive a home visit in 2018-19.


Answered by
Justin Tomlinson Portrait
Justin Tomlinson
This question was answered on 26th June 2019

The Work and Health Decision Making Directorate makes decisions on benefit entitlement for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and Universal Credit (UC) customers who have failed to attend Work Capability Assessments.

Whilst we would be able to ascertain the total number of ESA claims closed for failing to attend a Work Capability Assessment without good cause, this would incur disproportionate costs. Further, the information would not provide details of how many of those customers were vulnerable or how many received a home visit. To obtain the details requested would require scrutiny of thousands of individual claims. Therefore, the information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate costs.

In respect of Universal Credit claims, these are not closed as a result of the claimant failing to attend the Work Capability Assessment. Where a decision is made that the claimant failed to attend without good cause, the claimant’s health journey is ended and their work conditions are changed accordingly. Information about the number of claims referred for a home visit during the decision making process is not collated. To obtain this information would incur disproportionate costs.

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