Personal Independence Payments

Thursday 26th November 2015 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People (Justin Tomlinson)]

Later today, I will publish Command Paper Cm 9159, the Government’s second response to the independent review of the personal independence payment (PIP) assessment. The review was carried out by Paul Gray and published in December 2014.

This paper provides an update of the actions my Department has taken against the short-term recommendations identified in the first review and its response to the remaining medium and long-term recommendations.

My Department has accepted all the medium and long-term recommendations in full except the recommendation to put in place and announce a

“rigorous and qualitative evaluation strategy”,

which we have partially accepted. My Department already monitors all aspects of the PIP process through operational checks, performance monitoring, including the publication of quarterly statistics, and ad hoc analysis. At the right stage in the PIP programme, as the evidence base builds from phasing in full PIP roll-out, my Department will develop an appropriate evaluation plan.

Since the Government’s first response to this review in February 2015, we have continued to make significant improvements to the PIP process with the average new claimant now waiting five weeks for an assessment, compared to 10 weeks in February 2015. My Department has used evidence from previous phases of PIP roll-out together with lessons learnt from the first review to ensure we are continuously improving the way in which PIP is delivered. Furthermore we remain committed to working closely with claimants and disability organisations and will continue to do so.

As set out in legislation, there will be a second independent review of PIP which will report by April 2017.

This paper will be available on the gov.uk website once it has been published.

[HCWS329]