Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what additional steps his Department has taken to reduce waiting times for people seeking personal independence payment decisions; and what the cost of those steps was.

DWP are working closely with both assessment providers to drive up PIP performance and taking forward various operational initiatives to improve overall PIP processing times, while also maintaining a strong focus on the quality of PIP decisions. So far DWP has introduced a wide range of improvements including:

• A reduction in claim times from terminally ill people to their expected level
• Quadrupling the number of assessments cleared each month since January last year;
• Almost 4 times more healthcare professionals.

And as a result of that:

• The number of people with a PIP claim in payment almost doubled between July and October.
• The number of clearances by providers has risen consistently last year and the backlog is reducing.

All these improvements were delivered within reasonable budget tolerances and with due governance.