Disability benefit claimants who are told they are fit to work are being left destitute, an MP has warned.
John Hemming (Lib Dem Yardley) urged ministers to act after he was approached by constituents struggling to get by without any income at all.
They had previously received Employment Support Allowance, which is paid to people who are ill or disabled – but had been told they were no longer eligible because they were fit to work.
READ MORE: {}
People in this position are eligible for Jobseekers Allowance while they look for work. But Mr Hemming said officials simply failed to tell them they had to apply for a new benefit.
As a result, they were falling between the cracks in the system and left with nothing at all.
The MP has sponsored a Commons motion urging the Government to act, which has now been signed by 17 MPs, and raised the issue with ministers.
He said: “This worries me because what’s happening isn’t what the Government thinks is happening.
“People are left with nothing. In many cases they are able to turn to families for help, but not always.
Most Read
“This is a very serious problem where people are just ending up destitute.
“As well as raising this in a Commons motion I have been speaking to ministers. They know there is a problem.”
The MP also said he had been approached by a constituent who could not even depend on help from a food bank – because they had no way of cooking food.
“They couldn’t pay their gas bill so what was available from the food bank was no good to them.”
Figures from charity the Trussell Trust have shown the number of people turning to foodbanks tripled in the past year.
A total of 346,992 people received three days’ emergency food from Trussell Trust banks between April and September 2013, compared with 128,697 in the same period a year earlier.
The Trust is calling for a public inquiry into why so many people are having difficulty feeding themselves, and a cross-party group of MPs has been set up to investigate.