Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of reviewing the Personal Independence Payment application process.

The Personal Independence Payment (PIP) application process is kept under continual review to ensure it meets the needs of claimants and helps the department reach an accurate assessment of an individual’s entitlement. Since PIP was introduced, we have introduced a range of accessibility improvements, such as the Video Relay Service and Relay UK, improved the clarity of the PIP2 questionnaire to make it easier to complete, expanded the assessment methods to include video and telephone, and introduced recording by request for telephone and face-to-face appointments. Claimants are also kept informed and updated at each stage of the application process, including through our improved text message service.

The Health Transformation Programme is further transforming the PIP service. The programme is introducing a digital end-to-end PIP service, with the initial offering being an online application, which eventually will be available as self-service from gov.uk. Small-scale testing of the online apply service began in January 2022; we will gradually expand and improve our approach.

We published Shaping Future Support: The Health and Disability Green Paper last year. This asked for views on ways we can improve people’s experience of the health and disability benefits system and set out ways we could make our services easier to access, make our processes simpler and help build people’s trust. We received over 4,500 responses to the Health and Disability Green Paper consultation and will respond with a White Paper in the coming months.