Welfare: Personal Independence Payment

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I recognise the strength of feeling around retaining those words, and we are very actively looking at how to put them into the regulations in a way that works legally. I am planning to update Peers next week, on 31 January, on exactly where we have got to. We are looking to incorporate them in regulations and have a device for doing it in that way.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

My Lords, I am encouraged by my noble friend’s words. I am not an expert in anything much at all in this House but I am an expert in not being able to walk very well. I have form in this area because I have been through the DWP tribunal system, so this is one area that I know something about. Does my noble friend accept that if these words are not made statutory in some way or another, the number of appeals will rocket so much, and there will be such a period of uncertainty in so many ways for so many people, that it is not worth not putting in these words?

[Lord Freud]

My noble friend is, as always, much too modest about all her other capabilities. We are looking at this very actively and have clocked that there is great concern. It is not—and was not—our intention for people to be concerned about this particular area, and I hope that I will have a definitive approach to present to Peers in a week’s time, in plenty of time for the debate on the regulations, which will happen on 13 February.