Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, to what extent auditors of health assessment reports on claimants of personal independence payment are independent from her Department.
Auditors of health assessment reports on claimants of Personal Independence Payment are not independent of DWP; they are independent of the Assessment Providers.
The DWP independent audit function, which was rolled out across the contracts in 2016, is used to judge how the providers are performing against set quality targets to ensure that the advice provided to the Department’s decision makers is of suitable quality, fully explained and justified.