Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what action they are taking to ensure there are no further instances of wrongly calculated benefits on the scale described by the Department for Work and Pensions in its document, ESA Underpayments: Forecast Numbers Affected, Forecast Expenditure and Progress on Checking, published on 17 October.

The Department has strengthened its governance arrangements for the identification and management of actual or potential errors, so the impact on individuals can be understood and an appropriate response put in place.

The National Audit Office conducted an investigation into the underpayment errors in transferring people to Employment and Support Allowance from other benefits and the Public Accounts Committee published their recommendations on 18 July 2018. The Department’s response to this investigation was published on 9 October 2018 and is available on Gov.uk.