Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many personal independence payment appeals to the First Tier Tribunal in (a) 2018-19, (b) 2019-20 and (c) 2020-21 that were cleared without a hearing were (i) withdrawn by the appellant, (ii) struck out, (iii) superseded and (iv) lapsed by the Department for Work and Pensions.
General information about appeals to the First-tier Tribunal (Social Security and Child Support) (SSCS) is published at: www.gov.uk/government/collections/tribunals-statistics
The specific information requested is set out below:
| Employment Support Allowance1 | Universal Credit (UC) | Personal Independence Payment2 | ||||||
Withdrawn Before Hearing | Struck Out Before Hearing | Superseded3 | Withdrawn Before Hearing | Struck Out Before Hearing | Superseded | Withdrawn Before Hearing | Struck Out Before Hearing | Superseded | |
2018/194 | 2057 | 86 | 7544 | 270 | 27 | 2028 | 3562 | 113 | 15651 |
2019/20 | 1302 | 147 | 5158 | 725 | 90 | 4766 | 3373 | 321 | 30231 |
2020/21 | 430 | 279 | 908 | 812 | 442 | 3667 | 2092 | 1245 | 31564 |
In 2019/20p, 12,235 (66%) UC appeals included an element5 relating to Limited Capability for Work, and in 2020/21p the figure was 3,002 (38%).
1Includes Employment Support Allowance (ESA) and ESA (Reassessments)
2Includes Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and PIP (Reassessments)
3Includes superseded and lapsed by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
4Financial Years April to March
p Provisional data and subject to further change. SSCS appeals are currently undergoing system updates. As such the data for 2019 to 2021 is based on legacy systems and these will be an under-representation of the actual number (2019/20 circa 1% and 2020/21 circa 14%).
5HMCTS may not be aware of the elements under dispute until after the DWP response is received
6Limited Capability for Work is an element of UC
Although care is taken when processing and analysing the data, the details are subject to inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale case management system and is the best data that is available. The data may differ slightly to that of the published statistics where data was run on a different date.