Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what information her Department holds on the effect of silicosis on her Department's budget.

Under the Industrial Injuries Scheme (IIS), silicosis is compensated for under the Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers' Compensation) Act 1979 lump sum scheme and Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit (IIDB).

Under the 1979 Act lump sum scheme, the department has paid out £41,382 over the financial years 17/18 and 18/19 to claimants and their dependants affected by silicosis.

Under IIDB, awards for silicosis are made under prescribed diseases which include other medical conditions. Unfortunately, as this information is not immediately accessible, and would require the merging, filtering and quality assuring of complex datasets, data on these claimants could only be provided at disproportionate cost.

For Personal Independence Payment (PIP) the latest data on claims in payment can be broken down by month from April 2013 to April 2019 and by disability (including silicosis) can be found on Stat-Xplore: https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/.

The latest data on PIP expenditure broken down by disability subgroup including pneumoconiosis, of which silicosis is one disease, is published and can be found at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/741592/pip-expenditure-by-medical-condition-2017-18.ods

For Employment Support Allowance (ESA), there is high level data stored on medical conditions on the Department’s data base; Stat-Xplore. However, at present this data has not been broken down to include conditions such as silicosis.

Guidance on how to use Stat-Xplore can be found here:

https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started.html