Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he has made a recent assessment of the potential impact of sharing clinical markers to identify claimants who have been flagged for safeguarding reasons between Capita and his Department on the likelihood of those individuals making a successful claim for personal independence payment.

DWP do not receive clinical markers from the NHS or have a safeguarding clinical marker on our systems.

In some cases, claimants may not be able to engage effectively with the claims process, due to reduced mental capacity or insight – for example, they may not understand the consequences of not returning a claim form and not have a personal acting body (PAB) to help them. In the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) journey, such claimants are considered to require Additional Support (AS) from DWP. They will have an AS marker attached to their case and elements of the PIP claims process have been adapted to provide further support for this group.

Having an AS marker does not automatically determine whether a claimant has direct entitlement to PIP or not, and there has been no assessment on the likelihood of individuals with AS markers making a successful claim for Personal Independence Payment.

For further information on Additional Support please see the PIP Assessment Guide section 1.12 PIP assessment guide part 1: the assessment process - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).