Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he has made an assessment of the disparity in support available to people with equivalent mobility needs who develop those needs before reaching State Pension Age and qualify for Personal Independence Payment, compared with those who develop the same needs after reaching State Pension Age and are only eligible for Attendance Allowance.

It is normal for social security schemes to contain different provisions for people at different stages of their lives, which reflect varying priorities and circumstances.

Personal Independence Payment (PIP) claimants continue to receive the benefit after they reach State Pension age, if they continue to fulfil the eligibility requirements, but claimants cannot establish a new entitlement to the mobility component or receive a higher award of the mobility component if they were receiving the standard rate.

These longstanding rules recognise that changing mobility needs as a pensioner is a common and foreseeable feature of the ageing process. It puts PIP recipients in the same position as someone newly disabled of State Pension age where they are required to claim Attendance Allowance, which does not have a mobility component.