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Heartless Tory ministers have spent £200million fighting to stop people getting sickness and disability benefits.

Welfare chiefs splurged the vast sum, revealed by the Mirror, contesting appeals for Personal Independence Payments (PIP) and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) over five years.

The two benefits, worth up to £141 a week, are replacing old-style payments to help fund the costs of illness and disability.

But since 2013, more than 400,000 people have been denied PIP or ESA after a medical assessment - only to win it back on appeal. More than two thirds of current appeal tribunals are successful.

Our figures sparked fresh calls to reform the "cruel" and "flawed" assessment regime, which is run by outsourcing giants Maximus (for ESA) and Atos and Capita (for PIP).

(Image: Getty Images)

James Taylor, spokesman for disability charity Scope, declared: "The system isn’t just failing disabled people - it’s failing the taxpayer."

We obtained our figures from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) through a Freedom of Information request.

They show the DWP ran up an estimated £199million in 'direct operating costs' between 2013/14 and 2017/18 dealing with the two stages of PIP and ESA appeals.

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The first stage, internal reviews called Mandatory Reconsiderations, cost the DWP an estimated £50.7m for ESA and £43.4m for PIP over five years.

The second stage, external appeal tribunals, cost the DWP an estimated £58.7m for ESA and £46.2m for PIP.

The overall cost per year of dealing with both types of PIP and ESA appeals shot up from around £32m in 2015/16 to £45m in 2016/17 and £62m in 2017/18.

The true cost will be far higher, because our figures do not count the price of running the appeal hearings themselves - which are paid for by the Ministry of Justice.

In 2016/17 alone the MOJ spent £103.1m on social security and child support tribunals - four out of five of which were either for PIP or ESA.

Once those costs are included, our analysis suggests the PIP and ESA appeal system cost taxpayers more than £100million a year.

Labour MP Jack Dromey, a shadow DWP minister, said: "The Mirror has exposed just how cruel Tory treatment of the vulnerable can be.

"Hard-hearted Ian Duncan Smith and Esther McVey have wasted nearly £200million on denying desperately needed support for the sick and disabled.

(Image: Getty)

"Claimants, sometimes dying, have had to wait for up to a year for their appeals to be heard. And to add insult to injury 7 out of 10 win on appeal".

Labour MP Frank Field, chairman of the Commons Work and Pensions Committee, said: "The Department is spending mega sums of money defending its own poor decision making, and putting claimants through the wringer in the process.

"DWP is already planning substantial improvements to the assessment processes, including recording assessments. But it must push harder and demand better from its assessors.

"It simply cannot afford not to."

Phillip Anderson, Head of Policy at the MS Society, said: “We know people with MS are being failed by assessments that don’t capture the reality of this painful and exhausting condition.

(Image: REX/Shutterstock)

"These figures highlight how much money this system is wasting – money which could be better spent helping people with MS to live independently."

Scope spokesman Mr Taylor added: "Flawed assessments are leaving huge numbers of disabled people without the essential financial support they are entitled to.

“The Government needs to urgently overhaul both the PIP and ESA assessments so they work for disabled people, not against them.”

DWP officials said the figures were internal snapshots, not official statistics, and "should be treated with caution".

They also said the figures for 2017/18 were still undergoing validation, and advised against drawing comparisons between different years because "the data is frequently revised."

We asked the DWP directly if the huge sum was fair or an appropriate use of public money.

A DWP spokeswoman replied: “We’re committed to ensuring that disabled people get the support that they need, spending £50 billion a year supporting them and those with health conditions. A relatively small proportion of all decisions are overturned at appeal – 4% for both PIP and ESA.”

The statistics in full

Source: Mirror FOI request to the DWP. Figures relate to DWP direct operating costs only. See caveats in story above.

ESA Mandatory Reconsiderations

2013/14 £3,126,636

2014/15 £14,551,932

2015/16 £9,692,386

2016/17 £10,712,461

2017/18 £12,590,885

PIP Mandatory Reconsiderations

2013/14 £292,435

2014/15 £3,882,822

2015/16 £7,500,733

2016/17 £13,900,013

2017/18 £17,847,514

ESA appeal tribunals

2013/14 £27,413,965

2014/15 £7,458,654

2015/16 £5,363,552

2016/17 £6,664,243

2017/18 £11,811,576

PIP appeal tribunals

2013/14 £147,164

2014/15 £2,799,971

2015/16 £9,436,303

2016/17 £13,687,088

2017/18 £20,123,668