The Treasury says it cannot give current figures on disability‑related premiums due to the cost and workload involved in retrieving the data.
Responding to a written Tynwald question from Douglas South MHK Sarah Maltby, Treasury Minister Chris Thomas MHK said confirming the number of claimants would require either commissioning additional work from the provider of the Benefit Payments System or manually reviewing around 3,600 case files.
However, he provided the most recent available figures from July 2024, when Treasury last reviewed the premiums.
Current Data
At that time, 993 income support recipients received an incapacity premium, 696 received a disability premium and 117 received a disabled child premium.
The Treasury Minister said current numbers were likely to be “very similar”.
A small number of claimants on income‑based Jobseeker’s Allowance or Employed Person’s Allowance may also receive these premiums, but identifying them would require a manual review of around 1,250 files.
The Minister said he could not commit staff to this work “at this particularly busy time of the year”.
He also confirmed that Treasury could not provide the cost of the premiums, as they form part of a claimant’s overall applicable amount rather than being paid as standalone allowances.
Calculating their total notional value would again require additional system work or a manual trawl of case files.
No formal assessment has been made of the impact of freezing the premiums, and the Minister said Treasury has no plans to withdraw them.
The written answer can be found here.
