Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment his Department made of the staffing levels required to efficiently process the transfer of employment and support allowance claimants to the personal independence payments claims.

Claimants to employment and support allowance (ESA) are not being asked to claim personal independence payment (PIP). PIP was introduced in April 2013 to replace disability living allowance (DLA) for working age people (between 16 and 64 years old) and operates an entirely separate assessment from the work capability assessment used for ESA claims. From October 2013 we have begun inviting some existing claimants of DLA to claim PIP. The current arrangements for this can be found on the gov.uk website:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-personal-independence-payment-toolkit-for-partners/the-personal-independence-payment-pip-toolkit-for-partners .

We are continuously looking at ways to increase the number of decisions made on PIP claims and to improve the claims process.

Internal DWP processes and the assessment part of the process are taking longer than expected and some claimants are taking longer than anticipated to return their claim forms but we are working closely with both PIP assessment providers as part of our plans to speed up the end to end claimant journey. We have introduced improvements in communications to claimants about the type of evidence they can supply to speed up their claim and we are taking action to support the assessment providers in clearing backlogs of work.