Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what indicators his Department plans to use to measure the quality of assessment reports produced by personal independence payment assessment suppliers.

The Department robustly monitors the performance of contracted suppliers and assessments are independently audited to ensure that the advice provided to the Department’s decision makers is of suitable quality, fully explained and justified. Assessment reports deemed unacceptable are returned to the provider for reworking. We continue to work extensively with PIP assessment providers to make improvements to guidance, training and audit procedures in order to ensure a quality service is maintained.

The Contractual target is 97% acceptable reports.

Detailed guidance on how reports are audited and the criteria to be used are set out in section 4.5 of the Personal Independence Payment Assessment Guide, which can be found here https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/547146/pip-assessment-guide.pdf.