Personal Independence Payments

Lord German Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, the reliability criteria used for the personal independence payment assessments —that is, whether people can undertake tasks safely, acceptably and repeatedly—are crucial for people with fluctuating conditions. In their response to the Gray review the Government say that everybody involved in assessing those criteria should have training, yet later they say that the DWP will undertake training separately from Atos and Capita, which will do their own training. Does my noble friend not think it would be much better if all three worked together on the training so that we have consistency of outcome and avoid outcomes such as the inappropriate loss of a Motability car?

[Lord Freud]

We have been working very closely with the providers to make sure that there is an identity of approach in training, right the way through the two different providers and DWP.