Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of introducing a mobility component to attendance allowance for people of pension age with disabilities.

Attendance Allowance (AA) is intended to help those with a severe disability who have long term care or supervision needs where those needs arise after reaching State Pension age. Entitlement is based on the on-going need for frequent personal care and attention, or supervision to ensure personal safety. A mobility component for those whose needs arise after State Pension age is not provided as it is expected that many older people will develop mobility issues as part of the ageing process. This is a long standing policy continued by successive Governments. There is no constraint on what the benefit can be used for, and individual recipients can choose to use their Attendance Allowance to fund mobility aids.

Latest published figures at end of February 2021, show that nationally there were 1.49m claimants of AA, of which 2,222 were in the Barnsley Central Parliamentary Constituency. In terms of expenditure on AA, nationally this was forecast to be £5.3bn in 2020/21.