Personal Independence Payments

Sarah Newton Excerpts

Tuesday 5th June 2018 Written Statements

[The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Sarah Newton)]

Personal independence payment (PIP) is a modern, personalised benefit that assesses people on needs not conditions. PIP is a fairer benefit than the old DLA system as it takes a much wider look at the way an individual’s health condition or disability impacts them on a daily basis.

We are constantly looking at ways to continually to improve the PIP service. In response to Paul Gray’s second independent review and the recent Work and Pensions Select Committee report we outlined numerous further improvements to the PIP service. This included numerous measures to improve the clarity of our communications products and increasing the level of clinical coaching, feedback and support available to each assessor.

A key part of our efforts to improve the assessment process will be making video recording of the PIP assessment a standard part of the process. We will be piloting videoing the assessment with a view to then rolling this out across Great Britain.

We have seen improvements in the overall quality of assessments since 2015 but we recognise there is still more to do to deliver the high quality of service those claiming PIP rightly expect. We will continue to work closely with stakeholder groups and our assessment providers to improve the quality of claimant communications, assessments, decision making and the overall claimant experience.

It is vital for claimants that we continue to have a stable service. My Department therefore intends to explore options to extend the current contracts for approximately two years as this will better allow for a stable transition to any new provision. At the same time we will look to enable more providers to deliver PIP by developing a DWP owned IT system. Throughout this period we will continue to focus on improving the service and the experience of claimants and offering the best value for money for the taxpayer.

We remain committed to understanding how the benefit is working and to continuous improvement in this space. Furthermore we remain committed to working closely with claimants and the organisations who represent them, and will continue to do so.

The measures I have outlined today will improve the claimant experience and we will continue to work with stakeholders to identify and implement further improvements to ensure we are delivering the high quality service claimants rightly expect and deserve.

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