Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the letter of 6 March 2014 from the Minister for Disabled People to Macmillan Cancer Support, for what reason his Department does not consider data on clearance times of personal independence payment normal and special rules claims to be robust enough to be included in the published quarterly statistics.

Releasing information on clearance times at this stage would give an incorrect representation of the process since the system has not yet reached maturity.

Professional statisticians determine when a series meets the criteria for publication as official statistics. That stage has not yet in their judgement been reached for this information.