My honourable friend the Minister for Disabled People (Jonathan Shaw) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.

In October 2007, the European Court of Justice decided that disability living allowance (care component), attendance allowance and carer’s allowance (“disability benefits”) should be classified as sickness benefits under Regulation EC 1408/71. Consequently, the benefits are exportable in certain circumstances. Before this judgment, disability benefits were not exportable and as a result people who had been receiving these benefits lost entitlement when they moved abroad.

The Government accepted that the disability benefits referred to above are exportable to customers living in the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland provided that certain conditions are met. This includes a requirement that customers making a new claim have been in the UK for 26 out of the past 52 weeks.

After careful consideration, we have decided to take a different approach on cases where people lost entitlement to a disability benefit when they moved to another EEA state or Switzerland before 18 October 2007 (the date of the judgment in case C-299/05, Commission v Parliament) but no earlier than 8 March 2001 (the date of the judgment in Case C-215/99, Jauch v Pensionsversicherungsanstalt der Arbeiter).

We accept that these people will have been in the UK for 26 out of the previous 52 weeks when they left the UK. We will therefore no longer require that they should satisfy this condition at the date they seek reinstatement, provided that they continued to meet the other relevant domestic and EU law eligibility requirements throughout the period their claim was disallowed. Payment will be considered from 18 October 2007.

Once full details are available, the Pension, Disability and Carers Service will start to contact those people who have already applied for reinstatement to check if they are able to have their benefit reinstated.

The department will take action to publicise this different approach and has placed information on the Government’s official website, Directgov at http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/N11/Newsroom/DG_185646. The disability benefits pages on the site will be updated as more information becomes available.