Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will extend the deadline for submissions on his Department's Consultation on aids and appliances and the daily living component of personal independence payment.

The Department’s consultation on aids and appliances and the daily living component of PIP began on 10 December 2015 and is scheduled to run until 29 January 2015, a period of 7 weeks and one day.

The time period for the consultation was decided in line with the Government’s consultation principles guidance. This advises that consultations should typically run for between 2 and 12 weeks, but that “the timing and length of a consultation should be decided on a case-by-case basis”.

As we are consulting on the specific and discrete issue of how aids and appliances are accounted for when determining eligibility to the daily living component, we feel 6 weeks is an appropriate length. The last PIP consultation, on the Moving Around activity, also lasted for 6 weeks. As the consultation is running over the Christmas period this was extended by 8 days.

The Department therefore believes that the existing consultation deadline allows reasonable time in which to respond.