Chris Ruane – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chris Ruane on 2014-04-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the performance of Capita on the delivery of personal independence payments for those who are terminally ill.

Mike Penning

Personal independence payment (PIP) is a new benefit and processes are currently bedding in. The Department’s contracts with Capita and Atos Healthcare for the delivery of assessments for personal independence payment include a full set of service level agreements setting out the Department’s expectations for service delivery, including quality of assessments and the number of days to provide advice to the Department.

Officials meet regularly with both assessment providers to discuss performance. We are closely monitoring their progress against the Department’s expectations for service delivery and are taking action to drive up performance where this does not meet the required standards. In particular, for both providers, the end-to-end process for many claimants is taking significantly longer than originally anticipated. We are working with the providers to ensure that they are taking all necessary steps to improve performance, speed up the process and ensure claimants receive a satisfactory experience. Special rules claims for terminally ill claimants are dealt with urgently by our assessment providers. The latest published statistics show that over 99% of people with terminal illnessess who have applied have been awarded the benefit, which means over 9,500 terminally ill claimants are now receiving personal independence payment.

Although limited data has started to feed through, we need to wait until the Department has quality assured, meaningful figures for publication. We intend to publish official statistics on PIP from spring 2014 in line with our publication strategy. An ad-hoc release of PIP information was published on 11 February 2014.