Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether her Department plans to take steps to reduce the number of Personal Independence Payment assessments that remain outstanding prior to increasing the rate at which legacy benefit recipients are moved onto Universal Credit.

PIP assessments and decisions are made independently of other benefits and have no impact on the pace at which legacy benefit recipients are moved onto Universal Credit.

We are seeing a gradual improvement in PIP journey times. The latest statistics show that the end-to-end journey for new and renewal claimants has steadily reduced from 26 weeks in August 2021 to 20 weeks at the end of April 2022.

In May 2022 Universal Credit started to bring a small number of claimants across the country into the mandatory migration process. We will continue to develop our processes and systems to scale the migration process and complete by 2024.