Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average length of time was for a decision to be made on a personal independence payment claim in each year since 2010.

Personal Independence Payment (PIP) was introduced for new claimants in a limited geographic area from April 2013 and nationally from June 2013.

We published initial statistics on Assessment Provider referrals and returns, clearances and outstanding claims for new claims on 28 January.

We intend to release PIP clearance times and waiting/outstanding times statistics on 18 March and have pre-announced this in line with UK Statistics Authority release protocols. All PIP statistics are available from the PIP Statistics home page: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/personal-independence-payment-statistics.