Stephen Timms
Main Page: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)Department Debates - View all Stephen Timms's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Sarah Newton
I thank my hon. Friend for her question and for the invaluable work that she and other members of the Work and Pensions Committee do. I look forward to receiving the Committee’s recommendations and will give them careful consideration.
I want to reassure my hon. Friend and other hon. Members that I believe in continuous improvement. I am very grateful for the constructive working relationship that I have with many disability rights organisations and charities that support disabled people, and for the time they give to my PIP stakeholder group. We are about to set up panels of claimants of both employment and support allowance and PIP so that we further engage with claimants themselves. Of course, we undertake proper independent customer satisfaction surveys to ensure that we take every opportunity to improve the claimant experience.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
The Minister has told the House that all 1.6 million existing claimants will have their cases reviewed. I am grateful to her for adding that those who had zero points, and therefore did not get PIP, will also be included in the review. Will she confirm that the 180,000 people who used to be on disability living allowance and are no longer receiving benefit will be included? In total, on top of the 1.6 million, how many cases does she expect to review?
Sarah Newton
As all Members will know, people have been going through a managed process of transferring from disability living allowance to PIP. We will be looking at people who have gone through the PIP assessment process. Just over half of people on disability living allowance have gone through the managed process to PIP. There are still people on DLA who are yet to go through the process, but we are taking on board all the findings of the appeal and improving the process to ensure that we make the right decision the first time. That is really important to us and to claimants.