Personal Independence Payment Applications Debate

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Department: Department for Work and Pensions

Personal Independence Payment Applications

Peter Heaton-Jones Excerpts
Wednesday 17th June 2015

(9 years, 6 months ago)

Westminster Hall
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Justin Tomlinson Portrait Justin Tomlinson
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My job is to continue with the roll-out. Greater minds than mine are continuing the discussions, and it may well be that welfare powers will be devolved, but we will leave it to the greater minds that represent us both to decide that.

Average claimant waiting time has been reduced by around three quarters since June 2014, so we are now looking at a new claimant waiting just five weeks for an assessment, with reassessments down to four weeks. Crucially, the median time for the whole journey, end to end, is now 11 weeks, which is a considerable improvement. Having cleared significant amounts of the backlog, we expect to be operating as “business as usual”. That is very welcome. The end-to-end time for terminally ill people, which was highlighted, is now down to six days, with 99% of claimants awarded.

I am conscious of time, so will try to rattle through—

Peter Heaton-Jones Portrait Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)
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Will the Minister give way?