Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many times his Department has written to claimants of contribution-based employment and support allowance requesting details of bank and savings accounts held in each of the last 12 months; and for what reasons that information was requested.

We do not require details of bank and savings accounts from claimants of contribution-based Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). When individual contribution claims are due to exhaust we invite a claim to income related ESA and if the claimant makes such a claim, we would request details of their household income and capital in order to assess the claim.

We regret that we are unable to provide details of the numbers of these requests without incurring disproportionate costs, as we would have to look at each individual claim affected.