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Written Question
Personal Independence Payment: Appeals
Wednesday 21st May 2025

Asked by: Cat Eccles (Labour - Stourbridge)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of the proposed reforms in the Pathways to Work Green Paper on the number of appeals that will be made by people who will lose their eligibility for the personal independence payment; and whether she plans to allocate additional funding for the administration of such appeals.

Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

DWP will work with the Ministry of Justice as normal and plan for any impacts.

Written Question
Pathways to Work
Monday 19th May 2025

Asked by: Cat Eccles (Labour - Stourbridge)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the Pathways to Work Green Paper on (a) local government and (b) the voluntary sector.

Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

No assessment has yet been made. Information on the impacts of the Pathways to Work Green Paper has been published here: ‘Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working Green Paper’.

A further programme of analysis to support development of the proposals in the Green Paper will be developed and undertaken in the coming months.

Notes:

  • There will be no immediate changes. Changes to PIP eligibility and rebalancing of UC aren’t coming into effect immediately. Our intention is these changes will start to come into effect from April 2026 for UC and November 2026 for PIP, subject to parliamentary approval.
  • PIP changes will only apply at the next award review after November 2026. The average award review period is about three years. At the award review, claimants will be seen by a trained assessor or healthcare professional and assessed on individual needs and circumstances.
  • We are consulting on how best to support those who are affected by the new eligibility changes, including how to make sure health and eligible care needs are met. PIP is not based on condition diagnosis but on functional disability as the result of one or more conditions, and is awarded as a contribution to the additional costs which result.
  • We also intend to launch a wider review of the PIP assessment which I will lead, and we will bring together a range of experts, stakeholders and people with lived experience to consider how best to do this and to start the process as part of preparing for a review. We will provide further details as plans progress.
  • After taking account of behavioural changes, the OBR predicts that 370,000 PIP claimants, equating to 1 in 10 of the PIP caseload in November 2026 at the point of implementation of the four point requirement, will have lost their PIP entitlement by 2029/30.
Written Question
Pathways to Work: Poverty
Monday 19th May 2025

Asked by: Cat Eccles (Labour - Stourbridge)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of the Pathways to Work Green Paper on the number of people in poverty in each of the next five years.

Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

An assessment of the potential impact of the Pathways to Work Green Paper on the number of people in poverty in each of the next five years is not yet available.

The government's impact assessment regarding the Pathways to Work Green Paper is available here: Spring Statement 2025 health and disability benefit reforms – Impacts.

The Office for Budget Responsibility will publish its assessment of the labour market impacts of the Green Paper proposals at the time of the Autumn Budget.

Written Question
Children: Maintenance
Monday 12th May 2025

Asked by: Cat Eccles (Labour - Stourbridge)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the merits of writing off debt payments for Child Support Agency payments valued below £500.

Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) has the ability to write off Child Support Agency (CSA) debt that is £500 and under in circumstances where no payment has been made within the last 90 days and where administrative powers have been considered but were deemed inappropriate or ineffective.

Writing off is not a quick or easy decision and involves exhausting other approaches to deal with the debt. All Child Support Agency debt is now at least 11 years old.

In the year ending March 2024 £17.8m of CSA debt was collected and £13.5m was written off.