Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make it her policy that claimants of (a) Personal Independence Payment and (b) Universal Credit with sight loss conditions that have no prospect of improvement will be exempt from reassessment under proposed changes to the benefits system.

Our wide-ranging package of reforms to health and disability benefits, set out in the Pathways to Work Green Paper, will improve experiences of the system for those who need it. The functional impact and severity of a condition can significantly vary across individuals, so we are not planning to exempt specific conditions, but we are planning to reduce reassessments for those with the most severe conditions.

We aim to guarantee that for both new and existing Universal Credit claims, those with the most severe, life-long health conditions, who will never be able to work, will not need to be reassessed in the future. Our plans to improve experiences of Personal Independence Payment also include reducing assessments for this group. We are exploring ways we could use evidence from eligibility for other services to reduce need for some people with very severe health conditions and disabilities to undergo a full PIP functional assessment.