400,000 ESA Claims Disappear due to DWP trickery
ESA on the rise: Figures from NIESR’s Jonathan Portes show the number of people receiving ESA is increasing – but there are none for those in the ‘mandatory reconsideration’ queue and it seems 400,000 claims awaiting assessment have gone unrecorded.
Vox Political is grateful to Same Difference for bringing this article by Work Test Whistleblower to our attention:
The old men of Caxton House might seem unworldly, but they know how to pull off a conjuring trick: they’ve made 400,000 claims vanish into thin air.
The Atos bottleneck has led to a huge number of jobless people getting stuck in welfare limbo (or “limboland” as IDS said in the House the other day). They wait…and wait…and wait for their ESA claims to be assessed.
In the meantime, how does the DWP classify them, in its official stats?
- JSA claimants?
- Unemployed?
- ESA recipients?
- Employees?
Answer: none of the above.
They aren’t recorded anywhere in the data fed to the press.
Read the rest of the article on the Work Test Whistleblower site.
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It’s about time that the Torys were kicked out why have they the right to beat up the poor and disabled and that mp who seid the disadvantaged are not worth minimum wage I would sack him I don’t care who he is I am suffering from deep depression and angsity attacks and vascular dementia the Torys don’t know how angry we and every body is so for christ all mighty get them out
Actually it is 700000 people waiting for an ESA decision and nearly 300000 waiting for a PIP decision, in many cases both for a year or more. (The longest one I know of for PIP is now 66 weeks.)
Please forward this to [email protected] and srhousing@ohchr/org
[email protected]