Oral Answers to Questions

Duncan Hames Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

It is always difficult to ask a question that has been written before hearing the previous answers. We accept that there are delays: we accept that within PIP, and we accept that within Atos and Capita. We are working closely with them to deal with that. Under the previous system, less than 6% of people ever had a face-to-face assessment; now it is 97%, which we should welcome. We need to get that down so that we can address paper claims quicker, particularly in cases of terminal illness, which we are working on. However, we must push this forward.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

It cannot be too early for my constituents who have experienced waits of between five and six months to get an assessment after they have submitted their PIP claim, and others have been told by service providers to expect to wait up to three months to get a decision after the assessment. Will the Minister tell us what he is doing to make sure that service providers face consequences if they do not improve those times?