Luciana Berger
Main Page: Luciana Berger (Liberal Democrat - Liverpool, Wavertree)Department Debates - View all Luciana Berger's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(6 years, 10 months ago)
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Sarah Newton
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Keeping people safe and taking care of the most vulnerable people in society are the top priorities for this Government, and I know that my hon. Friend does a huge amount of work in her constituency to support the most vulnerable members of her community. I can absolutely provide that assurance—PIP is a non means-tested benefit that is not subject to the benefits cap. It plays a vital role in enabling disabled people to play as full a part in society as they can, which is something I know that my hon. Friend and I both want.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
It is nothing short of a national disgrace that Ministers persisted with this utterly flawed and unfair system of PIP assessments despite all the warnings. It was only when the High Court ruled that Ministers’ changes to PIP were “blatantly discriminatory” against people with mental health conditions and were a breach of their human rights—the opposite of parity of esteem in action—that the Government announced that they would review the 1.6 million cases. Can the Minister assure the House that PIP assessments will take into account the full range of symptoms and factors affecting mental health, especially those symptoms that we cannot see that present differently on different days, including due to bipolar disorder, depression and phobias?
Sarah Newton
I can absolutely assure the hon. Lady that we are utterly committed to making sure that mental health and how it affects people are properly and fairly treated throughout the PIP assessment process, but I do think we should look at the number of people who are now receiving help, and the number of people with mental health problems who are now receiving financial support through PIP who were not under DLA. Some 200,000 people now receive the highest level of support, and more than 100,000 people receive the highest level of mobility support. Clearly PIP is not broken, because it is supporting many more people than DLA did.