Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make it his policy to reintroduce indefinite personal independence payment awards for degenerative and incurable conditions without further assessment.

Personal Independence Payment is designed to assess people as individuals and ensure that decisions on entitlement, award lengths and timing of reviews are appropriate and evidence-based. We have been clear that longer term awards will be made in cases where the claimant's needs are expected to remain relatively stable or change slowly. On-going awards will be made in some cases where significant change in the claimant's needs is very unlikely.

All awards, regardless of duration, will be reviewed periodically to ensure that the individual continues to receive the correct amount of benefit. Where we have sufficient evidence to do so, we will conduct a paper based assessment without the need for the claimant to attend a face to face assessment.