Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the number of people who are (a) incapable of ever working and (b) will no longer have Universal Credit reassessments.

The Department for Work and Pensions has not made a formal estimate of the number of people who are incapable of ever working. However, we recognise that a proportion of claimants receiving health-related benefits have severe or lifelong conditions that significantly limit their ability to engage in work.

Subject to Parliamentary approval, the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill sets out that those who meet the Severe Conditions Criteria (SCC) will not be called for future reassessments for Universal Credit (UC).

We estimate that over 200,000 people will be covered by this exemption in 2029/30.

This comprises:

• 106,000 people in the ESA Support Group, who have met the SCC as of January 2025, but some will move to UC over the coming years.
• 56,000 people who are existing recipients of the UC Health element, 6,000 of whom are also in receipt of ESA, as of January 2025. This number will fluctuate prior to implementation of the policy in April 2026.
• 71,500 people who we expect to flow on to the UC Health element and meet the SCC after April 2026.

Further details can be found in The Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill: Impact Assessment (May 2025).

As outlined in the Pathways to Work Green Paper, the Department intends to make changes to both the UC health element and the reassessment process. While final decisions are yet to be made, the Government has committed to ensuring that people with severe or terminal health conditions, such as those meeting the SCC or the Special Rules for End of Life (SREL), will not be subject to routine reassessments.

The Department is currently consulting on these proposals, and further detail will be provided following the conclusion of the consultation period on 30 June 2025.