Personal Independence Payment: Multiple Sclerosis

(asked on 16th October 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many new personal independence payment claimants with multiple sclerosis did not receive an award during their initial personal independence payment assessment and subsequently received an award at (a) mandatory reconsideration and (b) tribunal for each year since 2013.


Answered by
Sarah Newton Portrait
Sarah Newton
This question was answered on 22nd October 2018

Table 1 below shows the number of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) reassessment decisions, mandatory reconsideration (MR) registrations, appeals cleared and decisions overturned at appeal for people with a primary disabling condition of multiple sclerosis.

Table 1: Number of PIP reassessment decisions, mandatory reconsideration (MR) registrations, appeals cleared and decisions overturned at appeal for people with a primary disabling condition of multiple sclerosis by year of initial decision

Number of decisions

Number of MRs registered

Number of appeals cleared

Number of decisions overturned at appeal

2013

0

0

0

0

2014

480

90

20

20

2015

1,950

470

220

180

2016

9,840

1,960

780

640

2017

10,540

1,990

660

560

2018 (January to June)

3,980

580

10

10

Table 2 below shows the number of PIP new claims for people with a primary disabling condition of multiple sclerosis who did not receive an award at the initial decision post assessment and where the decision was changed at MR or appeal.

Table 2: Number of PIP new claims decisions for people who did not receive an award at the initial decision post assessment where the award was changed at mandatory reconsideration (MR) and where decisions were overturned at appeal for people with a primary disabling condition of multiple sclerosis by year of initial decision

Number of decisions

Number of decisions where the award was changed at MR

Number of appeals cleared

Number of decisions overturned at appeal

2013

70

10

10

10

2014

850

60

100

70

2015

1,550

90

210

150

2016

1,290

60

210

140

2017

1,350

60

160

110

2018 (January to June)

810

20

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Since PIP was introduced 3.5m decisions have been made until June 2018, of these 9% have been appealed and 4% have been overturned.

Data on the number of people who had the mobility award increased from none or standard rate to the enhanced rate is available from internal analytical datasets, but to assess the completeness of recording and quality assure the figures to answer this PQ would incur disproportionate cost.

Data has been rounded to the nearest 10. Components may not sum to totals due to rounding.

'#' fewer than 5 decisions in this category.

The data relates to MRs and appeals recorded up to June 2018 (the latest published data on appeals). Claimants who have received benefit decisions more recently may not yet have had time to complete the claimant journey and progress to appeal.

PIP data includes normal rules and special rules for the terminally ill claimants, and is for both new claims and DLA reassessment claims.

Data is based on primary disabling condition as recorded on the PIP computer system. Claimants may often have multiple disabling conditions upon which the decision is based but only the primary condition is shown in these statistics.

Appeals data shown in the tables is taken from the DWP PIP computer system’s management information. Therefore this appeals data may differ from that held by Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service for various reasons such as delays in data recording and other methodological differences in collating and preparing statistics.

Some decisions which are changed at mandatory reconsideration, and where the claimant continues to appeal for a higher PIP award, are then changed again at tribunal appeal. Therefore the number of people who had a decision changed at mandatory reconsideration and the number of people who had a decision changed at tribunal appeal cannot be added together.

Decisions overturned at appeal may include a number of appeals that have been lapsed (which is where DWP changed the decision after an appeal was lodged but before it was heard at Tribunal).

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