22 July 2005
Government plans to slash the number of people claiming incapacity benefit have suffered a blow after a detailed statistical exercise revealed there were 135,000 more recipients than estimated.
The Department for Work and Pensions discovered the additional claimants when it published a 100% measurement of IB and severe disablement allowance recipients on July 15. Previous estimates were based on 5% sample groups.
A DWP spokesman said: 'The new figures still show that the trend for IB recipients is going down. The revised figures do not, however, affect the total amount of money paid out to IB claimants by the DWP, or the department's future allocations from the Treasury.'
DWP ministers plan to reduce the number of people claiming incapacity benefits from 2.6 million to around 1.6 million by replacing IB with two payments from 2008 and encouraging people with minor disabilities back to work. It forms a key part of the Treasury's long-term plan to achieve an 80% employment rate across the UK. The addition of past omissions could slow progress towards that target, but the DWP is confident it will still 'greatly reduce' IB claimants.
Other benefit claimant rates previously based on estimates have also been revised as part of the Work and Pensions Longitudinal Study programme, which adjusts the National Statistics database. But those figures show that past estimates for the state pension and housing benefit, for example, were largely accurate.
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