Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many new personal independence payment (PIP) claimants with epilepsy have had their PIP decisions overturned in their favour as a result of an appeal hearing since April 2013.

The information requested for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) New Claims where Epilepsy was listed as a Main Disability in Great Britain can be found in the table below.

Table: PIP new claims for claimants with a primary disabling condition of Epilepsy - initial decisions where PIP was awarded or not, and decisions changed/overturned at the Mandatory Reconsiderations (MRs) or Appeals stage, by financial year of initial decision.

Since PIP was introduced 3.9m decisions have been made in Great Britain across all health conditions up to December 2018, of these 10% have been appealed and 5% have been overturned.

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. The disability subgroup of Epilepsy in the PIP Computer System includes Cataplexy, Generalised seizures (with status epilepticus in last 12 months), Generalised seizures (without status epilepticus in last 12 months), Narcolepsy, Partial seizures (with status epilepticus in last 12 months), Partial seizures (without status epilepticus in last 12 months) and Seizures - unclassified. In the application process, claimants’ primary disabling condition is only recorded for collation by the Department at assessment.

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

Data has been rounded to the nearest 10.

Appeals data taken from the DWP PIP computer system’s management information. Therefore this 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.

MR and appeals data include people who were awarded PIP at initial decision. An appeal can only be made against a decision which have gone through the MR process. The number of people who had a decision changed at MR and the number of people who had a decision changed at a tribunal appeal cannot be added together.

Claimants who have received benefit decisions more recently may not yet have had time to complete the claimant journey and progress to appeal.