Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Justin Tomlinson and Cherilyn Mackrory

Monday 28th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

Although the vast majority of assessments—we have had over 4 million PIP assessments —are right first time, there are serious implications for those involved where they are not. As part of the forthcoming health and disability Green Paper we will be looking at claimants’ ability to get good-quality supportive evidence; the role of advocacy; the role of the assessment itself; and further changes on mandatory reconsideration and appeals, building on the holistic changes we brought in that allowed us to nearly the double the successful changes at the mandatory reconsideration stage, rather than have claimants having to go through the long appeal process. The key bit here is that the vast majority of successful appeals are because of additional written or oral evidence at that stage, and we need to make it is easy as possible to get such evidence into the beginning of the application.

[Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

What steps she is taking to ensure that universal credit claimants are able to take advantage of sector-specific training opportunities.