Oral Answers to Questions

Justin Tomlinson Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

My right hon. Friend has raised an extremely important matter. Unfortunately, fraud does not happen just at the level of the individual, but involves organised crime as well. Since July 2019, the Department has secured the removal of 1,500 social media accounts, many of which were related to organised crime, and since May 2020 it has suspended 170,000 claims.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

16. What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of processing times for personal independence payments.

[The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Tom Pursglove)]

We are committed to ensuring that people can access financial support through PIP in a timely manner. By prioritising new claims, increasing resources and using different assessment channels, we reduced the average new claim process from 26 weeks in August 2021 to 18 weeks in October 2022.

[Justin Tomlinson]

Capacity is key to assessment. What progress is being made to extend the severe conditions criteria in the PIP system, learning the lessons of the changes we have made to the special rules for the terminally ill, which would potentially allow us to remove 300,000 unnecessary assessments from the system, benefiting claimants and the taxpayer?

[Tom Pursglove]

I am hugely grateful to my hon. Friend, who is of course a distinguished former Minister for disabled people and whose views on these matters I listen to incredibly carefully. We announced in “Shaping future support: the health and disability green paper” that we will test a new severe disability group, so that those with severe and lifelong conditions can benefit from a simplified process to access PIP, employment and support allowance and universal credit without needing to go through a face-to-face assessment or frequent reassessments. We will consider the test results, once they are complete, to influence thinking on the next stages of this work.