Asked by: Lord Touhig (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the reply by Lord Freud on 10 March (HL Deb, col 542–3), whether they are embarking on an evaluation of personal independence payment assessments with a "priority focus" for people with mental health conditions or learning disabilities, as recommended by independent reviewer Paul Gray in <i>An Independent Review of the Personal Independence Payment Assessment</i>.
Answered by Lord Freud
On 28 January 2015, there were 97,900 new claimants to Personal Independence Payment awaiting an assessment with an assessment provider, down from 175,200 in September. At that same point there were 15,000 reassessment claims awaiting an assessment.
The Department is currently considering the medium and longer-term recommendations made by Paul Gray in the first Independent Review of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and will respond in due course.
As we made clear against this recommendation in the Government’s initial response to the review, understanding how the PIP claiming process is working and how it affects people is very important. As part of our performance monitoring, we are considering how we could best implement a comprehensive evaluation strategy which builds on the early evaluation research already published in July 2014.
As the published statistics demonstrate, by 28 January 2015 the average claimant was waiting 14 weeks for an assessment, down from an average 30 week wait in July 2014. We are continuing to work with the Assessment Providers to reduce assessment waiting times further.
All statistics are available from the PIP statistics home page:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/personal-independence-payment-statistics The next statistics are due to be published on 18 March.
Asked by: Lord Touhig (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the reply by Lord Freud on 10 March (HL Deb, col 542–3), how many people seeking personal independence payments are (1) awaiting new assessments, and (2) awaiting reassessment.
Answered by Lord Freud
On 28 January 2015, there were 97,900 new claimants to Personal Independence Payment awaiting an assessment with an assessment provider, down from 175,200 in September. At that same point there were 15,000 reassessment claims awaiting an assessment.
The Department is currently considering the medium and longer-term recommendations made by Paul Gray in the first Independent Review of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and will respond in due course.
As we made clear against this recommendation in the Government’s initial response to the review, understanding how the PIP claiming process is working and how it affects people is very important. As part of our performance monitoring, we are considering how we could best implement a comprehensive evaluation strategy which builds on the early evaluation research already published in July 2014.
As the published statistics demonstrate, by 28 January 2015 the average claimant was waiting 14 weeks for an assessment, down from an average 30 week wait in July 2014. We are continuing to work with the Assessment Providers to reduce assessment waiting times further.
All statistics are available from the PIP statistics home page:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/personal-independence-payment-statistics The next statistics are due to be published on 18 March.
Asked by: Lord Touhig (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many of the current prison population were in receipt of Carer's Allowance on entering prison.
Answered by Lord Freud
The information requested is not readily available and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.