Asked by: Sarah Newton (Conservative - Truro and Falmouth)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what progress her Department has made on creating a single assessment service for benefits claimants who are disabled or have long-term health conditions.
Answered by Justin Tomlinson
We announced in March 2019 that we have launched the Health Transformation Programme to deliver a new integrated assessment service across all health and disability benefits. This will make the assessment process simpler, quicker, more user-friendly and more joined-up whichever benefit people are claiming. This integrated service will still be taking applications to individual benefits on a separate basis.
Alongside this work, we are also undertaking a feasibility study to explore whether a single assessment for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) would further improve the experience for the small number of people who apply for PIP and benefits requiring a WCA at the same time. The study is being informed by existing evidence and we have been gathering views and insight from key stakeholders including healthcare professionals to understand the issues around feasibility.
Asked by: Sarah Newton (Conservative - Truro and Falmouth)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what identifiable expenditure his Department has spent on Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly in each year since 2007-08.
Answered by Steve Webb
The information is available in the ‘Benefit Expenditure by Local Authority from 2000/01 to 2013/14’ tables at the following address:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/benefit-expenditure-and-caseload-tables-2014
Asked by: Sarah Newton (Conservative - Truro and Falmouth)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what progress has been made on Cornwall's additional European social funding.
Answered by Esther McVey - Minister without Portfolio (Cabinet Office)
The Government has asked Local Enterprise Partnerships to work with local partners on a strategy for how the European Social Fund (2014-20) should be spent in their area. The Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Enterprise Partnership has developed a comprehensive strategy, the themes of which the Government has incorporated into the draft Operational Programme which will be submitted to the European Commission this month to being the negotiating process.