Disability Benefits

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) on securing the debate. There are two points that emerge from the recent work of the Work and Pensions Committee. First, PIP assessments should routinely be recorded. We know that the assessments very often go wrong—we have heard lots of examples of that already—but we do not know why. They should routinely be recorded, with an opt-out available for claimants who do not want a recording to be taken. All the providers agree with that proposal, but for some reason the Government will not accept it. The Minister’s predecessor gave a number of reasons, which were all valid but all surmountable. Because we do not record the assessments, we do not know what is going on, so the problems just carry on and will not be fixed.

Secondly, the cash provided by PIP is designed to cover the extra costs arising from people’s disabilities. Of course, the amounts will vary from one person to another, but during the Select Committee’s recent inquiry on benefit levels, the New Economics Foundation told us that on average PIP covers only just over a third of the additional income that a disabled person requires to afford a decent standard of living. I welcome the Government’s commitment, in last month’s disability action plan, to set up an extra costs taskforce that will assess those extra costs. Can the Minister tell us when that taskforce will start its work? One practical proposition is to increase the number of levels in PIP—there were more in DLA—so that a better proxy for people’s extra costs could be provided.

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[Mims Davies]

We have a new chief medical adviser and 4,000 clinicians in this area, with a statutory duty and an understanding that is very much among the learnings that we have gained. I hope that that reassures the hon. Gentleman, but if there is more to say, I will write to him. Questions have been raised about how the evidence is looked at and how it works; I am asking those questions myself, individually, and am happy to continue to do so.

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I am grateful to the Minister for picking up my point about default recording and for her offer to look into it. When she does so, will she bear it in mind that all the companies that provide these assessments favour default recordings?

[Mims Davies]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The companies want to get it right and they are keen to do what is right. I am very happy to look at that, feed back to him my thoughts and pick that issue up in the Department under my tenure.

Of course we aim to make the right decision as early as possible. We recognise that the numbers are high. By the very nature of things, anybody who comes to an MP’s constituency surgery has invariably had a very poor experience; they would not come to us otherwise. That is why I want to take away the particular cases that have been raised today. However, those cases must be seen in the context of overall decisions—