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DWP chiefs face fury after admitting 30,000 extra sick or disabled people are owed benefit payments in an eight-year-old scandal.

New estimates suggest 210,000 people received too little Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) in a blunder that dates back to 2011.

That is more than the 180,000 victims at the last estimate - and it's the second rise since the error emerged in 2017.

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) chiefs today insisted an army of 1,200 staff is making "good progress" on fixing the blunder, paying back 58,000 people a total of £328m so far.

But the news comes too late for more than 20,000 potential victims - who have all already died.

Shadow Minister for Disabled People Marsha De Cordova said: “Once again disabled people are suffering as a result of the chaos at the heart of the DWP.

(Image: PA)

"This mess is yet another example of the hostile environment created for disabled people by this Conservative Government. It is scandalous that tens of thousands of disabled people have died before receiving the social security that they were owed.

“Labour is clear that those affected by these errors must be compensated. The Government’s continued failure to right its wrongs is disgraceful.”

Geoff Fimister, co-chair of the Disability Benefits Consortium of charities, said the DWP needed to move "much more quickly" to correct mistakes.

And he hit out the DWP for refusing to pay compensation or interest.

"It is only right that the DWP should be undertaking a thorough trawl to identify these historic underpayments and reimburse those affected," he said.

"If they need to revise their estimates, so be it.

"The real pity is that the mistake happened in the first place."

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The blunder happened when people were put on the wrong system when they moved from the old incapacity benefit to "contributory" ESA.

The problem was spotted in 2017 - and since then the number of people affected has soared twice.

At first, ministers estimated up to 70,000 people would be hit. In October 2018 that rose to 180,000 because the DWP agreed to widen the scope of payments. Now it is 210,000, thanks to more accurate updated forecasts.

Today's update reveals 58,000 people have now received back payments worth £328million - an average of £6,000 each.

Total back payments are now expected to hit £920m, which despite more people being hit, is down slightly from the previous estimate of £970m.

By March 2025 the extra bill is set to be £1.61bn, because people will continue getting higher payments than they would have done. This is slightly down on the £1.67bn figure estimated previously.

(Image: Alamy Stock Photo)

But the real cost will be far higher because that figure does not include the cost of 1,200 DWP staff who are working to fix the problem.

In total, DWP chiefs are examining 600,000 potential cases - and expect 210,000 to receive a refund.

The mammoth exercise is happening in two phases.

Phase One deals with 320,000 potential cases which post-date 21 October 2014, and was meant to be finished by April this year.

But the process is taking longer than expected for 20,000 of those potential victims who have all died.

Not all 20,000 will have been owed a payment, but where they were, DWP chiefs are having to trace their next of kin to pay them the money.

That will now take until the end of 2019, not April 2019 as the DWP first promised.

Phase Two deals with a further 250,000 potential cases which date back to 2011, and are expected to be complete by the end of December 2019.

(Image: Getty)

Lastly, DWP chiefs today announced they will examine a further 30,000 cases that date since 2015 after new guidance was found to be less effective than first thought.

It comes after the Mirror revealed 46,448 potential victims across all groups had died since the ESA errors.

Again, not all 46,448 of those people will have been owed payments. Average figures suggest between a third and a quarter were owed money.

A DWP spokesman said: “We are making good progress reviewing and correcting cases and repaying claimants affected by past ESA underpayments, with over £300 million of arrears paid so far.

"All claimants in the first phase have now been contacted and we have 1,200 specialist staff working to ensure no one loses out.

"Where a claimant has sadly died we are ensuring that any arrears owed to them are paid to their next of kin.”