Joan Walley
Main Page: Joan Walley (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent North)Department Debates - View all Joan Walley's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
Can the Secretary of State tell me how in touch he is with those people who have wasted over six months waiting for PIP? What are we to say to our constituents when they cannot get an answer from his Department? Where is his humility and his accountability? How is he dealing with this?
Mr Duncan Smith
First, no wait that is not in accordance with the time it takes to do these assessments is acceptable. We are driving those down. For anybody who has been waiting, I accept that for them it is a personal tragedy. We want to change that, which is what we are doing. That is why we are doing it in this way, and I will come back to that point with some figures later. The point is that we introduced the changes with PIP because ultimately it will be a better system than DLA. Many people did not get the kind of service they needed under DLA, and that is the purpose of PIP.
Mr Duncan Smith
I will come back to that point in a moment, but first I will make some progress.