But the savings will still be generated by increasing pressure on claimants and former claimants.
He added: "At Stormont House, the five parties agreed a series of measures to protect the vulnerable and safeguard current and future welfare claimants under the control of the executive," he said.
We know that Atos Healthcare wants to pull the plug on its work to test whether benefits claimants are fit for work after its staff received death threats.
The coalition has faced a barrage of negative publicity over its work programme, which has found sustained work for only 3.5% of claimants – less than the 5% expected if it had done nothing.
For those still on jobseeker's allowance after eight weeks, the centre created a website where claimants could identify their personality strengths.
Citizens Advice has been highly critical of prolonged sanctioning of jobseeker's allowance claimants, especially after the minimum sanction period was increased from one week to four in October 2012.
An analysis by the DWP suggested 30% of claimants, more than 300,000 families, could lose about £80 a week but the money saved would reach £1.3bn in 2018-19, the BBC said.
The committee calls for a "yellow card" approach whereby claimants who breach rules for trivial or unintended infringements receive "pre-sanction written warnings" rather than having payments stopped.
Sherborne said: "It is abundantly clear that the documentary evidence before the court is only likely to reveal a tiny proportion of the total wrongdoing committed by MGN as against each of the claimants – merely the very tip of the proverbial iceberg".
Benefits typically take around 16 working days to process, although backlogs mean many disability benefit claimants have waited for several months.
In written submissions to the preliminary hearing, James Eadie QC,for the government, said: "The [intelligence services] adopt a 'neither confirm nor deny' stance as to whether relevant steps [surveillance] were in fact taken in relation to the claimants, whilst accepting that the impugned regimes might in principle have been used".
