Personal Independence Payments

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, is it not clear, in the light of this and other judgments, that the PIP descriptors in the field of mental health need substantial amendment? It sounds as if that is what the Government have in mind, and I am very pleased that the department is upholding the judgment as much as the rest of us. We really need a cool, hard look at all the descriptors, and for the Government to consult on them fully and come back with detailed amendments. We also need better-trained assessors and a genuine stage of mandatory reconsideration, instead of the rubber stamp that we all too often get now. There is a huge number of successful appeals and consequently an unacceptably long wait for a tribunal hearing.

[Baroness Buscombe]

I shall do my best to respond to the noble Baroness, who of course knows so much about this area. On waiting times, we are committed to processing PIP claims as quickly as possible while ensuring that we have all the evidence we need to make the right decisions. A key issue has been not having sufficient medical information in the first instance. We are working with the NHS to see what we can do to rectify that. In the last quarter, February to April 2019, 55,097 claims on average were processed each month. The average new claim or reassessment claim waits just six weeks for assessment. However, PIP is needs based and not condition based, and reviews are a key part of the benefit to ensure that the right support continues to be delivered.

In a nutshell, we believe that PIP is working so much better. There were originally some quite difficult issues around it. We are constantly working to improve the situation. That is why now have a mental health champion in each PIP assessment centre. We are making sure that there are experts behind each assessor. We have videos to help people understand what the process is so that they can feel comfortable about that engagement at the assessment centre. We also encourage people to come with a trusted third-party individual to support them through that often quite emotional process.

Yes, it is a complex process. We are committed to doing all we can. We will report back to the House with further information in relation to the Supreme Court’s decision, but we continue to spend more on supporting those with mental health issues—quite rightly.

Universal Credit Fraud

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

It is entirely correct: 1% of all claims referred by staff are fraud claims. It is important to make it clear that we have trained our staff properly to investigate those claims when they are received, to make sure that the work coach can assess the claims and transfer them on to our fraud and investigation service.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, is it not very sad that certain claimants say that they are being penalised in cases of fraud? Can the Minister guarantee that this does not happen? Is it not the answer that, until the fraud is sorted out, loans must be made face to face with a JCP official? This matter would not then arise. Until it is sorted out, is that not the safest thing to do?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, where that is possibly the case, as the noble Baroness rightly said, it is important that we approach each and every case carefully on a case-by-case basis. Each case appears to be different. We do not intend to penalise people who have been duped by others; that is, those who have honestly received benefits incorrectly. We do all we can to support those people throughout the process, working closely with the CPS.

Benefit Changes: Vulnerable People

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, I am pleased that this debate enables us to have a calm, rational look at recent changes to benefits. I think the whole House appreciates that powerful contribution from the right reverend Prelate.

I will concentrate on two benefits—universal credit and PIP—to see how they are working in practice for vulnerable claimants, but I will leave the bigger picture to others. As this is a debate, we do not need the shorthand of catch-all, critical phrases that do not always help with the here and now, such as, “Universal credit plainly isn’t working”. However, if we have a rational debate, I believe it is up to the Government to take heed of practical, suggested solutions to problems identified by bodies such as the National Audit Office and the IFS, organisations such as Citizens Advice, and many charities, some of which are being quoted today. What we really do not want is for the Government to close their ears and say there is not a problem right now that needs sorting out.

We know that there is no prospect of any radical change in legislation in this area at the moment, but there must be scope for changes in the way in which benefits are administered. The phrase “test and learn” applied to UC before managed migration sounds sensible, but do we not know already what is and is not working for vulnerable claimants?

I have recently been in touch with two Citizens Advice offices and been told about their experience in helping clients claim UC and PIP. With UC so much can go wrong very quickly, they say, leaving individuals and families without the necessary funds to pay their way. This is why food banks have never been busier. In 2013 there were 400 food banks; there are now 2,000.

The most obvious reason for this is the five-week delay in payment of UC. I know that this was deliberately brought in to mimic a monthly pay packet and to encourage benefit claimants to take more responsibility for their own financial circumstances. However, it is quickly leading many claimants into debt from which they really struggle to recover. We have heard from the Secretary of State that this is being looked at again. Many vulnerable claimants who are or have been in work are used to a weekly pay packet, even nowadays. However, politics is in such a volatile state at the moment that I really hope that a change to the long waiting time is in prospect. I know that advance loans are available, but the strict repayments regime can make matters worse.

I now turn to some of the other problems faced by these claimants. Perhaps the most predictable problem is that many, if not most, claimants are not familiar with digital systems. They may not have a home computer, so the whole digital world is foreign to them. Even with their hands held by support staff, passwords will be forgotten and simple ID checks, which may involve another appointment at a JCP office, will often hold up a claim. The remedy to this surely must be for enough staff to help claimants in person. The DWP may not have budgeted for this but it will just have to find the funding.

Then there are messages from work coaches to which some claimants do not respond. This risks the closure of a claim, with all the problems that that brings. I can see how frustrating this is to a busy work coach, but we are talking about claimants who may find the whole unfamiliar process terrifying. A bit of flexibility may be all that is required. I would like the Minister to say a word about whether a vulnerable claimant will always be sanctioned if an appointment with a work coach is missed, in spite of a claimant commitment having been signed. One adviser said:

“The DWP so frequently demonstrate zero flexibility when a little common sense could make the world of difference”.


Next is the long wait for work capability assessments, with appellants found fit for work being forced on to UC before managed migration because there is nothing else to claim between mandatory reconsideration and appeal.

Finally, there are slightly less common but nevertheless important problems such as the way in which the form deals with migrant workers and the right to reside, and the complicated rules around specified housing.

Perhaps the Minister can tell us whether there is any sense of urgency to try to deal with these issues which are causing such problems. Surely it is important to get these matters sorted out before even the pilot managed migration next month.

Turning now to PIP, it is certainly good news that those who have mental health problems are now being helped much more than under DLA. However, there are still problems with PIP, which is now far more expensive than the Government budgeted for when it was first brought in to save money. I believe it still tops the list of issues in MPs’ mailbags. It is certainly the most common benefits problem that people recently went to Citizens Advice about in Surrey, for example— quite a rich county, I always thought. The chair of Citizens Advice Surrey Research and Campaigns Group said:

“There have been several weeks where we have struggled to cope with the demand from people for help with Mandatory Reconsideration and appeals, we felt like that was all we were doing in our office”.


The reason for this would appear to be the poor quality of many of the assessments, the rubber-stamping of mandatory reconsiderations and the long wait for tribunals.

Tribunal judges have also been very critical of the number of appeals, saying that certain claimants’ entitlement to the higher rate of PIP was so apparent that there should have been no need for an appeal of any kind. Judges have even been heard to apologise to appellants. After all, appeals are expensive and stressful, and many of those seeking appeals are disabled. Nationally, for 81% of people making new PIP claims and 76% of reassessments, the initial DWP decision is unchanged at mandatory reconsideration, while 73% of those who go on to appeal have their decisions overturned by a tribunal judge.

One of the recommendations of Citizens Advice Surrey Research and Campaigns Group was for clarification from the Government about the provision of medical evidence. I have always thought that the purpose of medical evidence was not clear. On the one hand, the Government say that PIP is not a medical assessment but a functional assessment but, on the other hand, they call for supporting evidence from doctors or other healthcare professionals from the outset, although they commission reports themselves only for tribunals. Do assessors always read the medical evidence? Claimants often say that they do not. Obviously, the most difficult assessments to judge are those relating to fluctuating conditions, but the statutory reliability criteria are supposed to address this question.

What would make a difference? First would be a properly trained workforce of assessors who use their common sense. Surely it is time the assessments were brought in-house. Second would be a much more robust procedure for mandatory reconsideration by decision-makers. Third would be for all assessments to be recorded. At least that would be a start. The Government are now thinking of amalgamating the work capability assessment and the assessment for PIP. The first is called a medical assessment, while the second is called a functioning assessment. A rethink of the whole nature and purpose of these assessments needs to be decided.

Housing: Pensions and Deposits

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

I entirely agree with the noble Lord that we must think carefully about how we encourage and support people to save for the long term and their retirement. That is why we are so pleased about the success of auto-enrolment. Our priority remains establishing long-term savings behaviour, so that people are enabled to save for greater security. Automatic enrolment has already reversed the decline in workplace pension savings seen in the decade prior to its introduction, and the number of first-time home buyers is at its highest level for 11 years.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, could the Minister clarify whether the average 35 year-old has put £35,000 into a pension pot, or whether the figure is much lower, as statistics showed a few years ago? It is very good news that we are not going to risk young people completely emptying their pension pots in a desperate attempt to get on to the housing ladder. Of course, this is another reason why more affordable housing is desperately needed.

Severe Disability Premium: Transfer to Universal Credit

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Tuesday 7th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, as I have already said, Ministers are considering the judgment in detail and will make a decision about their response in due course. When designing universal credit, it was important to provide a simpler system, and a conscious choice was made not to replicate every aspect of disability provision in the legacy system, which contains seven different disability payments. These are difficult to deliver and prone to error, and they can be confusing for claimants. Therefore, we are replacing those seven complex and overlapping disability benefits.

Under the legacy benefit system, 500,000 disabled people did not claim what they were entitled to. Therefore, in terms of families losing out, about £2.4 billion of benefits went unclaimed in the legacy system as a whole. We have now moved to a much fairer system. For example, the rate per month under UC for claimants determined as having limited capability for work and work-related activity is more than twice the amount payable through the equivalent support group component of ESA. Under universal credit, it is now £336.20 per month per household, compared with £167.05 per month through the equivalent ESA support group. This means that around 1 million disabled households will gain an average of £100 more per month on universal credit than on legacy benefits.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Answer. She said that the Government are considering their options and whether the regulations will have to be rewritten. What about the 10,000 people who are still waiting for the lump-sum payments that they were promised? They will have to wait much longer unless the Government separate the payment regulations from the rest of the managed migration pilot regulations so that the lump-sum payment can be made as soon as possible. Being disabled is very expensive and I expect that people have racked up quite a lot of debt because of this problem. Will the Government undertake a thorough process of evaluation of the effect of universal credit on disabled people?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I make it clear that current severe disability premium claimants will receive transitional protection as part of the managed migration process. We now have transitional payments in place for severe disability premium claimants who have moved on to universal credit. As the noble Baroness well knows, we are now spending over £50 billion a year on benefits to support disabled people and those with health conditions, which is over £4 billion more than in 2010. We continue to evaluate the impact of our policies on this system. As the lead Minister for research at the Department for Work and Pensions, I am very clear that we make it our business to evaluate all the policies that we put in place.

Households Below Average Incomes Statistics

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating that Statement and for advance sight of it, but, not for the first time, I rather wish Lords Ministers were allowed to make their own Statements. I do not blame the Minister for the rather partisan nature of that; I suspect it may be aimed more at the Secretary of State’s Back-Benchers than at this House. None the less, since she has had to put that on the record, I am now obliged to repudiate it before we can get on to talking about poverty figures. Bear with me while I do that briefly, then we can talk about what was actually in the Statement.

Since the Secretary of State chose to attack what she called “Labour’s welfare splurge” and what we called lifting children out of poverty, I have to put to rest once and for all that old canard that the Government were forced to cut spending on the poor because of Labour’s record. A detailed study, by Ruth Lupton et al, of the coalition Government found that,

“the poor bore the brunt of its changes to direct taxes, tax credits and benefits”.

Meanwhile, with the exception of the richest 5%, those in the top half of the distribution were net gainers from the changes.

“Perhaps surprisingly, overall the ‘welfare’ cuts and more generous tax allowances balanced each other out, contributing nothing to deficit reduction”.


Those coalition austerity cuts were not needed to reduce the deficit or to do anything about Labour’s spending in the past; they were to pay for tax cuts. The benefits of those tax cuts are felt primarily by higher earners. If you increase the personal allowance, someone earning £80,000 a year benefits from all of it. A single mum working 35 hours a week during term time at the minimum wage does not earn enough to benefit at all.

I have now taken a deep breath and will move on to today’s Statement. One thing that the HBAI—households by average income—does is to give us an interesting sense of perspective, and I want to remind us of that today. It tells us that, to lie in the top half of the income distribution, a single individual last year needed a net income over £17,700. A single individual with an annual net household income of over £34,900 would be in the top decile. In other words, he or she would have an income higher than 90% of the population. We all tend to assume that other people earn similar amounts to us and that is a really good reminder that, if that is what the average is, think what the poor are living on.

The Minister mentioned relative poverty today. Normally, Ministers in this Government end up talking about absolute poverty because it is the only figure they can find that does not appear to be rising. Under these figures, they have not looked at the international measure, which is relative poverty, but even today’s figures show that the number of children living in absolute poverty before housing costs increased by 300,000 and after housing costs by 200,000. It is staggering to see absolute poverty rising in our country.

But that is inevitable. Ministers may not wish to come into politics to make people poorer, but I am afraid that if one wills the ends one must will the means. It is inevitable that, if you keep cutting benefits to children, families with children will get poorer. The benefit freeze alone will now save the Government some £4.4 billion a year. That is £4.4 billion that has gone into the Treasury and come from the pockets of some of the poorest families in our country. That means that the Government have cut the value of all the main means-tested working age benefits—all the classic ways in which people keep body and soul together, including personal allowance, income support, jobseeker’s allowance, ESA, housing benefit, universal credit, lower disabled child addition—I could go on. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the effect of the benefit freeze carrying on for yet another year next year means that families will lose another £560 a year on average.

Perhaps even more surprising is that these figures show that the number of pensioners living in poverty actually rose by 100,000 last year, which means that it has increased by 400,000 since 2010. What are the Government planning to do about that?

I have three questions for the Minister. The last Labour Government set out to reduce and eventually eliminate child poverty. They had a clear strategy. What is now the Government’s strategy? Do they aim to reduce child poverty? If so, by how much, by when and on what measure? Or do they think it acceptable that 30% of British children are growing up below the poverty line, half of whom are under five?

Secondly, given that the Government repeatedly stress the importance of people being in work, what will they do about the fact that the proportion of poor children who are in working families has risen again, to 70%?

Finally, will the Government please rethink the benefit freeze? If they would invest just enough to stop it now and not continue it for another year, that could make a real difference to some of the poorest families. These families have suffered enough. When food bank use is at record levels and we keep reading about teachers having to bring in food and clothes to schools simply to help children be well enough, clothed enough and fed enough to learn, surely something has to be done. Please will the Government act?

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, I am afraid that I am a very inadequate substitute for my noble friend Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope, who is unavoidably absent today. I am a very poor stand-in—or rather, sit-in.

Today’s figures come as a result of a deadly combination of high inflation, weak pay growth and big cuts in benefit support for working-age households, as we have heard. The most shocking figure is that there are 200,000 more children in absolute poverty. I echo the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, in asking the Government to use the upcoming spending review to restore the remaining £1.3 billion taken out of universal credit work allowances in 2015 and consider introducing a work allowance for second earners to help get both parents into work.

As for getting more disabled people into work, which was mentioned in the Statement, the National Audit Office report which is out today is pretty critical of the department, saying that it cannot assess, for example, whether disabled people receive a consistent service between jobcentres or over time. It also says that the department underspends its budgets by overestimating the take-up rate of some of its programmes. Will the Minister say whether the department will undertake to look seriously at the recommendations from the National Audit Office?

Finally, disabled people themselves are very keen to help the Government to get this right. There are a lot of brilliant disabled people who would be very keen to engage with the department on employment.

Employment and Support Allowance Payments

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

First, my Lords, I repeat that these errors should never have happened, and the department is working extremely hard to make sure that the wrongs that have been done are put right at pace. I want to make it clear that we did not do nothing, as it were, for six years; we started work on this back in 2013. We are working hard with increased support to make sure that we get this right but we want to do it with care. It is very unfortunate that an estimated 20,000 people have deceased since this work began but we are working extremely hard to identify the families.

On passported benefits, I am able to say to the noble Baroness that we are engaging with a number of authorities that are responsible for passported benefits to raise awareness of the ESA underpayment exercise and the potential issues arising from it. This will enable departments across government to understand the impacts on the passported benefits they administer. However, the department does not hold information on what people may or may not have claimed.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, from the Lib Dem Benches, I thank the Minister for making this important Statement. The issue of passported benefits is extremely important. I wonder how the department has learned from this mistake so that it does not slip up on migrating claimants from ESA to universal credit. Will she use the upcoming managed migration pilot to consider alternatives to the hard stop, so that vulnerable claimants do not have their benefits cut off if they do not make a universal credit application on time?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, let me make it very clear that those with complex needs will not suffer from a hard stop during the managed migration process. As I have said to your Lordships in previous debates, we are working hard to ensure that we work with stakeholders to pilot the whole scheme of managed migration. On the noble Baroness’s very good question about lessons learned, the key point is that through these errors in migrating people from incapacity benefit to ESA, we have learned that the big mistake made was that we did not make contact with individual claimants. We thought it was great to have an automatic transfer, but the issue was that we did not have all the right, real-time, up-to-date information on claimants. Therefore, some of those who were eligible did not receive these payments.

Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2019

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for explaining these two important orders. I think this is her first time speaking on these matters. I do not know whether it is the first time on the Floor of Chamber but it may be, because these orders are usually taken in Grand Committee—I know that the noble Lord, Lord Jones, was keen that they should be debated here. I am sure the whole House welcomes the uprating that she announced, but has the time not come for this to be automatic rather than at the discretion of the Government, as there is no way the schemes will be wound up in the next few years?

My first time speaking on the mesothelioma order was 11 years ago, when I learned about its long latency period and the fact that some of the people affected, such as family members, did not work directly in industrial processes using asbestos. Subsequently, I knew a man who was diagnosed when he was over 80, his condition probably a result of national service in the Navy.

This was to lead me to ask the Minister about much-needed and hitherto neglected research, but she has spoken about that and I am glad that we have learned a lot more about it. I think a lung health summit was held last year with the British Lung Foundation, the Union of Democratic Mineworkers, the NHS and MPs. I am also glad the NHS long-term plan recognises the objective of improving outcomes for people with respiratory diseases.

We do not want to add to the number of people diagnosed with this disease, so perhaps the Minister will also tell us what work is going on to make sure that any asbestos in schools and hospitals is rigorously monitored, if it cannot be removed. I expect that this is where the Health and Safety Executive comes into its own, a body which has often been unfairly vilified for just doing its job. I know that it has had to cope with cuts to its budget, but I hope that it is able to be on top of this issue.

Finally, on the pneumoconiosis order, how does the payment tie in with universal credit, as that was something that I was not sure about?

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I had the privilege of chairing the mesothelioma oversight committee of the last-resort scheme. I thank the Minister for both her presentation and the welcome change in dealing with research, which a lot of us were concerned about for a couple of years when it did not appear to be linked. We are pleased that the DWP is now working closely with other departments. Can the Minister indicate exactly how much was spent on a cross-departmental basis on research in the last 12 months to give us an idea of the scale of that improvement?

I want also to thank the staff in Minister’s arm’s-length branch who give my committee enormous support in dealing with stories of unimaginable pain and tragedy. Although one has to try to get some distance, it is important we all place on record that this is not some dry statutory instrument; it is about people’s lives and deaths. My own sister-in-law died of this disease some years ago. We still do not know whether it was as a result of pushing a trolley through the basement of the Scunthorpe hospital where she worked or of washing her husband’s overalls from the steelworks where he worked. Also, a good friend of mine died less than a year ago. I had known him for 40 years; he worked in local government. You would think, “Where on earth would he catch it in local government?” He was a student before he started his local government career, working for Cape Asbestos for 12 months.

I think it has been mentioned already that it is not always the traditional industries. There are jewellery repair workers; there are stable lads; there are all sorts of areas that people do not expect. It is important when we come across similar issues to try to pre-empt them and not allow this to happen again.

Finally—the Minister has pre-empted this issue and I know that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, will raise it, but I am going to be his John the Baptist and hope that I do not share the same fate—the forum for the victims and the victim support group have been trying for nine years now to get some equality between in-life payments and dependency payments. I know that the Minister has indicated that the Government have thought about this and decided that they should not do anything about it at this stage, but it is time to seek equalisation between the sums paid to asbestos victims who claim while alive and those paid to dependants, usually widows, which are much lower for pneumoconiosis. This disparity affects women in particular and has stagnated for quite a long time. Failing any change of heart, will the Minister agree to meet some of us to discuss any possibility for more flexibility in considering those requests for equalisation?

Employment and Support Allowance

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

I thank my noble friend for his question. I agree that it is not sufficient for the medium and long term just to say that we are talking to other departments. We are looking to see how, when we move to universal credit, we can ensure through managed migration that nobody loses out and that, where possible, all the benefits that can be passported are passported. However, we have to accept that we are dealing with a really complex system and with millions of people. It is right to put this in the context of ESA: we are dealing with 2.3 million working-age people and, up to now, we have spent £54 billion on benefits for these people with disability and health conditions. That is over 6% of all government spending. We have to do this in a way that is sensible and practical and as careful as possible. That is why we are also now employing 400 people in addition to the 400 we have already in order to sort out this particular mistake.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps I might ask about communications. Will all the JCP offices be able to tell people that they do not have to take any action themselves to get compensation for what has happened? Sometimes people have asked JCP officers whether they need to fill in the form and have been told that they do. Obviously, there is a bit of mis- information flying round. Will the department keep JCP office staff up to date with how they should carry on?

[Baroness Buscombe]

The noble Baroness is right to raise this point. The core communication hub is at Oldham and it is working hard to send out letters with phone numbers to absolutely everybody, so that people can be in touch by phone. We are constantly training our work coaches in all job centres to make it absolutely clear that this is something we are prioritising and have to sort out. It is up to us to do it; it is not for claimants or others to have to make that move. We are in touch with people who think they might be within this group and we urge them to be in touch with us on the numbers we are sending them by letter.

Personal Independence Payment

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to improve Personal Independence Payment assessments in the light of the number of successful appeals.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Buscombe) (Con)]

Of the 3.5 million decisions made since the personal independence payment was introduced, 9% of all decisions have been appealed and 4% of all decisions have been successfully appealed. We are committed to making further improvements to the quality of decision-making and have now deployed 150 presenting officers across PIP and ESA to provide valuable insight into why decisions are overturned at tribunal.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that reply. Maybe that takes us slightly further on, but she will know that the chairman of Scope, who is appealing his own PIP decision, has drawn our attention to the 71% of successful, but expensive, PIP appeals in the first three months of this year. The figure goes up and up. This tallies with the experience of Muscular Dystrophy UK, which reports a huge increase in PIP cases, with many claimants left in real financial hardship, such are the delays in the system. What practical, concrete steps is the department taking to improve the quality of assessments right now?

[Baroness Buscombe]

I am pleased to say to the noble Baroness that appeals actually reduced by 9% in the last quarter, April to June of this year. We are doing a great deal to try to ensure that we get the decision right the first time. To that end, we have changed the guidance to ensure that those on the highest awards, with needs that will not change or will deteriorate, get an ongoing award; we have made changes to the PIP assessment guide; we have restructured our decision letters to make them easier to understand; we have introduced mental health champions to support assessors who undergo specific training to emphasise the functional effects of mental health conditions; we have launched a series of videos outlining the claim process in a simple and clear way; and, to help to improve trust in the assessment process, we are considering options to video record PIP assessments. We are designing a live-testing pilot, due to begin later this year. I assure all noble Lords that my honourable friend in another place, the Minister for Disability, is constantly looking at ways to improve.