Personal Independence Payments Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Work and Pensions
Drew Hendry
Main Page: Drew Hendry (Scottish National Party - Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)Department Debates - View all Drew Hendry's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
Personal Independence Payments
Drew Hendry Excerpts(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I also congratulate the hon. Member for North West Durham (Laura Pidcock) on securing this important debate. Time is tight, so I will concentrate on one group for whom I have raised issues many times, and for whom the term “PIP” has perhaps most resonance: the terminally ill.
For any person facing a PIP assessment, the idea of an assessment creates a lot of worry and stress. For the terminally ill, the pressure is multiplied many times over—on the individual involved, who has been given that terrible diagnosis, and on the families who have to deal with the fallout of that situation. Even insurance companies—private firms—acknowledge that cancer patients and people diagnosed as having a terminal condition need special treatment and pay out immediately. They do not hang about waiting to assess people; they know that the condition is not going to change.
I am grateful to the MND Association, and I will read their description of that terminal illness:
“Few conditions are as devastating as motor neurone disease (MND). It is a fatal, rapidly progressing disease of the brain and central nervous system, which attacks the nerves that control movement so that muscles no longer work. There is no cure for MND.
While symptoms vary, over the course of their illness most people with MND will be trapped in a failing body, unable to move, talk, swallow, and ultimately breathe. Speech is usually affected, and many people will lose the ability to speak entirely. Some people with MND may also experience changes in thinking and behaviour, and 10-15% will experience a rare form of dementia.”
Yet people with MND have to go for PIP assessments. The cost to terminally ill people and their families is much more than just the pain of that shortened journey to the end of their life. Research done for the MND Association shows that people with terminal illnesses face £12,000 a year more in costs, not including loss of income.
Transferring from DLA to PIP, 15% of people living with MND have had their awards reduced. A progressive condition, a terminal illness and a reduced award: surely that cannot be right? I have raised concerns many times over the challenge for many terminally ill people facing the six month rule—the requirement of a
“reasonable expectation of death within six months”.
That language is surely incompatible with the variable nature of conditions and terminal illness. The DWP should review its guidance on the use of DS1500s to reflect that terminal illness is not an exact science. Will the Minister review the process for the terminally ill? Will she tell us how many people have been turned down? Will she tell us how that injustice will be urgently addressed? Will she tell us, now that there is to be a review, what appeal process will be made available to those not contacted by the DWP, who rightly feel that they are entitled to an enhanced payment?