Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessments her Department has made of the adequacy of Personal Independence Payment tribunal wait times; and what steps she is taking to reduce them.

We are working to reduce the outstanding caseload in the Social Entitlement Chamber of the First-tier Tribunal. Reducing the outstanding caseload is the key measure to bringing down the waiting times for tribunal hearings.

HM Courts & Tribunals Service continues to invest in improving tribunal productivity through the recruitment of additional Judges, deployment of Legal Officers to actively manage cases, the development of modern case management systems and the use of remote hearing technology as appropriate. If an expedited hearing is requested, a Judge or Legal Officer will make a decision on that issue, taking all the circumstances into account.

Data on Tribunals performance is published by the Ministry of Justice on a quarterly basis. Receipts, disposals and the outstanding caseload for individual Chambers in the First-tier Tribunal and Upper Tribunal, the Employment Tribunal and the Employment Appeal Tribunal can be found at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/tribunals-statistics.