Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of the claimants for personal independence payment in 2019 who died within six months of making those claims and had those claims disallowed by her Department (a) made those claims under the special rules for terminal illness and (b) died within three months of those claims being disallowed by her Department.

Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is claimed by people with a range of health conditions and disabilities, many of which are degenerative or life limiting and the Department treats the death of any claimant sympathetically. Claims made under the special rules for people who are terminally ill are fast tracked and are currently being cleared within 5 working days for new claimants.

Of the 1,820 PIP claimants who died within 6 months of registering a claim and were disallowed at initial decision:

• 240 claimants originally registered their claim under Special Rules for Terminal Illness.
• 1,670 claimants died within 3 months of an initial decision on their PIP claim.

Notes

Source: PIP ADS, Customer Information System

• PIP data includes normal rules and special rules for the terminally ill claimants, and is for both new claims and DLA reassessment claims.
• This analysis only takes the first registration a claimant makes to PIP.
• This is unpublished data. It should be used with caution and it may be subject to future revision.

• Data has been rounded to the nearest 10. Components may not sum to the whole due to rounding.
• Figures cover PIP claims registered between January 2019 and December 2019, claims cleared up to and including 30^th April 2020 and deaths up to 30^th April 2020.
• GB Only.

Under the Social Security (Notification of Deaths) Regulations 2012 and s125 of Social Security Administration Act 1992 date of death is provided to the Department for all registered deaths. Additionally, next of kin also provide information on the date of death of an individual and this information is used appropriately in the administration of Departmental benefits.