New Style ESA Claim, NI Contributions Issue, Broken Old Claim, Its a mess!

I am not sure if anyone on here will be able to advise me, or point me in a direction that will get the issue I am having with my wife's new ESA claim resolved but after many many hours on hold with both DWP and HMRC I am running out of ideas! My wife had been claiming ESA(CB) after being migrated from IB from 2013 until 2021.

We ended her claim when her self employment business took off and moved her over the Permitted Work earnings limit. Sadly, her illness has taken a turn for the worse over the past months and she is unable to work and with her income dropped accordingly, we started a new claim for New Style ESA.

We submitted the online initial form and got a call back in 10 days. They told us she didnt have enough NI contributions, which I immediately queries on the basis that I had been doing her self assessment for the past few years and I knew she had gotten the Class 2 NI contributions. Apparently HMRC hadnt logged them, so that started my first round of phone calls to them.

After 2 weeks of back and forth, paying voluntary Class 2 contributions, getting them refunded because they werent requried I finally got a customer service agent who discovered that my wifes original claim for ESA had never been closed. It was no longer in payment, but its presense made HMRC believe she was getting the NI credits associated with disability benefits so they hadnt, and couldnt apply the correct credits from her self employment.

I needed to get DWP to "fix" the old claim. That started the second round of back and forth, and more hours wasted and promised call backs never received etc.

So, its been 4 weeks since that initial call and we are no further forward. DWP havent closed the old claim, HMRC havent corrected my wife's NI record and then today we got an ESA50 in the post. For a claim that is on hold because she doesnt have sufficient NI credits? Please let something make sense!

I spent 80 minutes on hold just today with DWP to ask about the ESA50 and was told to complete and return it but they actually couldnt work out why it had been sent or the current status of my wifes new claim. We reached out to our local MP but were told that the DWP take 20 working days to reply to their queries and I hoped (wrongly lol) that I would be able to solve it faster by persisting in calling them back etc.

I realise that no one on here can fix this for us, but right now I will take any ideas on how I go about getting this resolved?

Well we've had the reply from DWP through our MP and it's even more of a mess!

They have admitted how they messed up, and have fixed it but determined that my wife is not actually eligible for ESA due to not having earned enough for the required 26 weeks.

The issue I have is that they stated that as she was self employed, and had earned her Class 2 contributions that fulfilled the NI requirements, BUT she could have only done that through earning enough to meet the earning requirements.

It makes no sense!

What's worse is it looks like they are counting this as their final response on the matter, and the next step is ICE.

Does anyone know if I can call DWP and speak to them about this, can that decision be reviewed or changed, or is it really final?

Well, we had a reply from DWP via our MP. Its honestly even more confusing.

They have admitted to their previous mistakes, and fixed them.
BUT
then went to on to say that regardless of the fact that now my wife's NI record is fixed she has sufficient NI credits, she isnt actually eligable because she hasnt earned enough for the 26 weeks earnings over the lower limit criteria - and sorry no one told you that.

The really ridiculous thing is that in order to get those Class 2 NI credits they have now admitted she has, that means she has to have earned over the lower limit to earn them! I believe i understand how it has happened that they believe this - its all a question of timing - when they fixed her incorrect NI credits that would have cleared her NI record entirely for the years in question - and shown she had Self employment credits, hence no income. HMRC then fixed her NI record but DWP had already done their checks and written their reply - hence missing out that it had taken HMRC time to fix everything.

The worse part is that DWP consider this a final response to our complaint, so i dont even know if i can challenge this without going to the ICE.

Can anyone advise if it would be worth calling DWP to explain all of this to them?