Asked by: Paul Girvan (Democratic Unionist Party - South Antrim)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, when the contract with Capita to provide assessment services in relation with personal independence payment will expire.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The department’s contract with Capita to deliver assessments for Personal Independence Payment in Central England & Wales expires 31 July 2019. As announced last year the department intends to extend the contract until 2021.
Asked by: Paul Girvan (Democratic Unionist Party - South Antrim)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what proportion of mandatory reconsideration decisions in relation to personal independence payment resulted in a change in the amount of the payment received by the claimant.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
Statistics on Personal Independence Payment (PIP) Mandatory Reconsideration (MR) clearances by type in Great Britain are published in Table 7B of the statistical publication “Personal Independence Payment: April 2013 to January 2019”, available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/personal-independence-payment-april-2013-to-january-2019
These statistics include MRs against decisions where the customer was awarded PIP, disallowances post-referral to an Assessment Provider due to failing the assessment, disallowances pre-referral to an Assessment Provider, and disallowances post-referral to an Assessment Provider where the customer failed to attend the assessment.
Statistics on the proportion of MRs resulting in a change in the amount of the payment received by the claimant is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Paul Girvan (Democratic Unionist Party - South Antrim)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the cost to the public purse was of appeals of (a) initial and (b) reconsideration of personal independence payments in the last three years.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Paul Girvan (Democratic Unionist Party - South Antrim)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what regular appraisals her Department undertakes of the performance of Capita in assessing claimants of personal independence payment.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
All elements of Capita’s performance are monitored including the requirements for the quality of assessments, which are assessed through audit. The PIP audit process assesses the quality of a sample of assessment reports on a monthly basis against the standards set out in the PIP Assessment Guide, with feedback provided to the provider.
Alongside contracted measures we continue to work extensively with Capita to ensure the quality of service is continuously improved, including improvements to guidance, training and the claimant journey.
The Department has set Capita challenging targets for the ‘Lot 2’ contract covering Wales and the Midlands. The department robustly performance manages Capita against those requirements on a regular basis.
Asked by: Paul Girvan (Democratic Unionist Party - South Antrim)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many incidents of benefit fraud have been identified where monies were claimed in the name of a deceased person in the last three years.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The specific data requested is not available. Incidents of this type are marked as identity fraud but are not recorded separately.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is constantly working to improve our systems to reduce fraud. To reduce this particular type of fraud, DWP receives automatic notifications of deceased individuals from the three General Register Offices, England & Wales and Scotland, on a daily basis, and Northern Ireland on a weekly basis.
DWP undertakes a rigorous matching process against the updates received from the General Register Offices to ensure that DWP Customer Information System records are annotated with the date of death within 24 hours of the General Register Office notification being received.
DWP staff can also input death data, if notified directly, as long as it is supported by appropriate documentation; i.e. a death certificate. This is updated in real time to the Customer Information System. Once notified of a death the Customer Information System account is marked to protect customer details from identity fraud and to ensure that the account remains secure.
Asked by: Paul Girvan (Democratic Unionist Party - South Antrim)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average cost per applicant is for her Department of an appeal against an initial refusal to grant a personal independence payment.
Answered by Sarah Newton
This information is not available and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Paul Girvan (Democratic Unionist Party - South Antrim)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average cost is to her Department of an application for personal independence payment by stage of application.
Answered by Sarah Newton
The average cost to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) of an application for Personal Independence Payment for 2016/17 is £407.61.
This cost is for the end to end position of a Claim for Personal Independence Payment i.e. the customer journey from initial contact to a decision being made.
We are not able to split the figure above by all of the stages within the Claim for Personal Independence Claim process but it can be split into the following elements:
We are unable to provide any further breakdown by stage of application as the information is not available and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Paul Girvan (Democratic Unionist Party - South Antrim)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of extending the eligibility for the motability scheme to recipients of attendance allowance.
Answered by Sarah Newton
The Motability Scheme is open to anyone, including those who have reached state pension age, who qualifies for higher rate mobility component for Disability Living Allowance, the enhanced rate of the mobility component for Personal Independence Payment, Armed Forces Independence Payment or War Pensioners Mobility Supplement.
Where claimants have an existing entitlement to a qualifying benefit when they reach pension age then they can retain their Motability vehicle. In these cases claimants would need to consider making a claim for the Care Component of DLA which they could receive alongside the Mobility Component.
Attendance Allowance does not have a mobility component and cannot therefore be used in payment for a leased vehicle. With regard to opening up access to Motability for those in receipt of AA, the policies relating to the operation and eligibility for the scheme are determined by the Motability Charity and not DWP.
Asked by: Paul Girvan (Democratic Unionist Party - South Antrim)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people that declared themselves as self-employed were found to be have employee status in 2017.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
We have interpreted this question to relate to child maintenance customers.
The Department does not routinely collate information on the number of people that declared themselves self-employed to the Child Maintenance Service that subsequently were found to be have employee status. Obtaining the information to answer this question could only be provided at a disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Paul Girvan (Democratic Unionist Party - South Antrim)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate he has made of the number of people that used self-employed status to avoid paying child maintenance payments in 2017.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The Department has not made an estimate of the volume of declaring self-employment as a means of avoiding child maintenance payments. Income information for paying parents is obtained directly from HMRC. This figure will include earnings from self-employment. Where there is reason to suspect a declared income or that a parent is using self–employment status as a means to avoid or reduce their maintenance liability, the case will be referred to the Financial Investigations Unit. The volume of cases which are subject to a complex earners investigation are published in Table 12 of Child Maintenance Service Statistics available on line at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/child-maintenance-service-aug-2013-to-dec-2017-experimental. Investigations into self-employed paying parents are a subgroup of the complex earners investigations.