Oral Answers to Questions

Sarah Newton Excerpts
Monday 7th October 2019

(4 years, 5 months ago)

Commons Chamber
Read Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Justin Tomlinson Portrait Justin Tomlinson
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

We strive to get the right decision first time, but we have to do much more to speed up the appeal process in the minority of cases where that does not happen. That is why we launched a series of pilots in the spring of mandatory reconsideration centres for both personal independent payment and work capability assessment, to ensure that we proactively gather the additional written and oral evidence that is often presented at the end of the independent appeal process, speeding up the process of ensuring that people get the right decision quickly.

Sarah Newton Portrait Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
- Hansard - -

I know the Minister is determined to see improvements in how decisions are made. Will he kindly update the House on the progress on introducing a single assessment service, which will greatly help the situation?

Justin Tomlinson Portrait Justin Tomlinson
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that. She works tirelessly in this area and is held in great respect by all Members on both sides of the House.

The integrated assessment is looking at how, with the claimant’s permission, we can share the evidence they have already gathered. We know that the majority of successful appeals contain additional written and oral evidence, often because the claimant had previously struggled to get that evidence. If the evidence is already in the system, we should be making it as easy as possible for the claimant to use it a second time.