Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Sherlock on 26 March (HL15523), whether they monitor the percentage of new style Employment and Support Allowance applications that are made for the primary condition of poor mental health.

The department monitors the primary conditions recorded for new style Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) applications. While primary conditions at application are not routinely published, these can be proxied through analysis of the claimants who are in the assessment phase of ESA, which is the first three months of the claim. The percentage of claimants in this phase with the main disabling condition ‘mental and behavioural’ is available on Stat-Xplore and reproduced in the table below:

Percentage of ESA Assessment Phase caseloads by main disabling condition:

* The latest available data is for August 2025.

* All new applications made to new style ESA are placed into “Assessment Phase”. This lasts for the first 13 weeks of an ESA claim.