Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of allowing claimants who are applying for both Personal Independence Payment and work capability assessment to re-use evidence already provided for one of those claims for the other application.

We recognise that there is scope to improve the way we deliver our disability benefit assessment services. In ‘Shaping Future Support - The Health and Disability Green Paper’, we proposed ways that could make our services easier to access and make our processes simpler, to improve the experience of people using the health and disability benefits system, including ways of offering greater flexibility and simplicity in the way that assessments are delivered. We will respond to the Green Paper consultation with a White Paper later this year.

The Health Transformation Programme (HTP) is modernising Health and Disability benefit services. It is procuring new Functional Assessment Service (FAS) contracts, which will bring together current Health and Disability Assessment Services and Personal Independence Payment assessments under single geographic contracts and provide the foundation for a new integrated Health Assessment Service.

The new claimant-focussed service will provide the opportunity to join up the process by re-using information to improve the claimant experience and reduce the time it takes to make a claim.