Disability Benefits Assessments Debate

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Department: Department for Work and Pensions

Disability Benefits Assessments

Hilary Benn Excerpts
Tuesday 1st February 2022

(2 years, 10 months ago)

Westminster Hall
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Hilary Benn Portrait Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
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I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. We have all had constituents come to see us who have been through an assessment and been denied, and we know the distress and pain that causes them. The latest figures show that 67% of appeals to the tribunal against a PIP assessment, 65% of appeals against a DLA assessment and 54% against an ESA assessment have been successful. Does she share my view that if those were the rates for the overturning of Crown court decisions—people who were found guilty, and then found innocent—there would be an uproar? Does she agree that the Government, and all of us, need to look at why, in so many of the cases that go to the tribunal, the original decision turns out to be wrong?

Gary Streeter Portrait Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
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Order. Marsha, before you respond, I remind everyone that interventions should be brief.