Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what targets he has set for the time taken to process new applications for personal independence payment.

The current commitment is that no one should wait more than 16 weeks for an assessment for Personal Independence Payment. The latest figures show that significant progress has been made over the past year. Claims are now being cleared at five times the rate they were in January 2014. The average new claimant now only waits seven weeks for an assessment. We are committed to building on this progress and achieving further reductions in claimant waiting times wherever practical.