PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Employment and Support Allowance (10 June 2014)

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the Answers of 1 April 2014, Official Report, column 603W, column 604W and column 605W on employment and support allowance, how many people who have been given a prognosis that (a) a return to work could be considered within two years and (b) return to work is unlikely in the longer term have been placed in the work-related activity group since October 2008.

Asked by:
Sir Stephen Timms (Labour)

The information requested is shown in the following table:

Outcomes of functional assessments by prognosis for the ESA work-related activity group, Great Britain: October 2008 – September 2013
	WRAG: Claimants with a prognosis of under 2 years	WRAG: Claimants with a prognosis of 2 years or more
New Claims - Initial assessment	451,800	11,800
New Claims – Repeat assessment	385,800	19,700

Source: Data in the tables above is derived from administrative data held by the DWP and assessment data provided by Atos Healthcare.

Notes:

1. Figures are rounded to the nearest 100.

2. The outcome recorded is the final DWP Decision Maker's decision or the recommendation made by the Atos Healthcare Professional where the Decision Maker's decision is not yet available.

3. The data presented above comes from benefit claims data held by the Department for Work and Pensions. It related to new and repeat ESA claims. In October 2008, ESA replaced IB for new claims. Starting with a trial in October 2010, and reaching a full scale national roll-out in April 2011, existing IB claims began to be phased out, with claimants reassessed to see if they qualify for ESA instead.

Answered by:
Sir Mike Penning (Conservative)
16 June 2014