Asked by: Alistair Strathern (Labour - Hitchin)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to reduce waiting times for responses to people with PIP enquiries in Hitchin constituency.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government) (Equalities)
Personal Independence Payment (PIP) services are delivered on a national basis, with performance managed across the whole service rather than by constituency. As such, we are unable to provide waiting time data specific to Hitchin.
We are improving service responsiveness through targeted recruitment across Disability Services. The recent onboarding of over 200 additional caseworkers is increasing capacity to support both decision‑making and telephony demand. This is reducing backlogs and contributing to improved average call waiting times, ensuring customers receive quicker decisions and more timely access to support.
We have also made sustained progress in reducing customer journey times, with average end‑to‑end clearance times falling from 26 weeks in August 2021 to 17 weeks as of June 2026.
In addition, we have deployed further resource to complaints and correspondence handling, prioritised the clearance of outstanding volumes, and strengthened performance management to improve timeliness. The Department’s service standard is to respond to complaints requiring formal investigation within 15 working days. While higher volumes and increasingly complex cases have affected response times in recent months, action is underway to address these pressures and drive further improvements in timeliness and efficiency.
Asked by: Alistair Strathern (Labour - Hitchin)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment he has made of the potential merits of compensating women born in the 1950s affected by changes to state pension age legislation.
Answered by Paul Maynard
The Ombudsman is considering this matter, he has not completed his final report and has yet to make any recommendations. When the report is complete the Government will carefully consider it.
It would not be appropriate to comment on the investigation and section 7(2) of the Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967 states that Ombudsman investigations “shall be conducted in private”.
Asked by: Alistair Strathern (Labour - Hitchin)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to his Department’s publication, DWP’s ministerial overseas travel, July to September 2023, published on 14 December 2023, how much of the £4,295.27 spent on his visit to India from 18 to 23 July 2023 was spent on air travel.
Answered by Paul Maynard
The total spent on air travel during the Secretary of State’s visit to India was £5,366.44 (this includes internal flights in India).
The Department has noticed an administrative error in the publication of the Ministerial Overseas Travel, July to September 2023. The Department has taken immediate action to update the publication to show that the total cost of Secretary of State’s visit was £5,751.54.