The Secretary of State for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has told a cross-party panel of MPs that new claims for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) have reached “record” levels and “never been so high”. However, the knock-on effect of this increase in demand for the disability benefit is a backlog of more than 300,000 people waiting for a health assessment.
A decision on the level of award someone may be entitled to receive is mostly determined by an assessment from an independent health assessor. Between January and April 2022, some 236,180 PIP assessments were conducted remotely over the phone or by video call, 53,330 were paper-based and 14,720 were face-to-face.
During the Work and Pensions Committee hearing on June 29, Labour MP, Steve McCabe, challenged Dr Therese Coffey over the number of people waiting for an assessment. He asked: “Are you at all concerned about the backlog in the PIP assessments these days? I gather it has trebled.”
Dr Coffey responded: “We are getting record claims of people applying for PIP. It has never been so high.”
He then pressed her on the backlog figures pointing out that the numbers have been rising for five years.
The DWP boss explained: “We had an action plan and we were starting to get on top of it. We were starting to get to the point where we were processing more than the claims coming in. That has now gone again. It is a challenge. I am not denying it.”
Mr McCabe asked when the figures may start to fall again.
Permanent Secretary at DWP, Peter Schofield responded, saying that it was a “good challenge”.
He explained: “The uncertainty is really one about what is happening to demand. It could be that demand is peaking and falling back, in which case we will be able to get on top of the backlogs more quickly, but if demand remains high, we will need to find ways of managing through. Part of that is absolutely the health assessors doing more and they have agreed a recovery plan.
“Part of it is around finding ways of particularly supporting people who are coming up to the end of their awards. By doing that, the amount of time it takes to go through for a new claim has remained broadly steady at around 20 weeks. That is how it has been for quite some time. That number has come down.”
However, he also revealed that the DWP is looking at how it can create a single assessment service for all health-related benefits.
Mr Schofield said: “More broadly, we have a longer-term plan called the Health Transformation Programme. That is our approach to really looking at how we deliver these benefits.
“The contract with the current assessors comes to an end next year, and we are looking at how we can bring together into a single assessment service a way of looking at both work capability assessments and universal credit and how we deliver health assessments in PIP, so we can deliver a better service for our customers going through that process, but also so we can make the best use of the resources that we have.”
New research by Citizens Advice estimates that disabled claimants are waiting for almost £300 million in support because of the delays.
The charity described PIP as a “lifeline” for millions of people, but said the waiting list for an assessment stood at 327,000 people between February and April this year.
It projects that £294 million of payments that would be awarded are being held up, forcing people into “impossible choices” as they try to get by financially.
The charity said more people are seeking help from Citizens Advice with PIP than with any other issue, with around 150 people an hour contacting advisers.
Chief executive Dame Clare Moriarty said: “The Government did the right thing by targeting more financial support towards those who need it most.
“But there are still things they could be doing to get money in the pockets of people who desperately need it in the cost-of-living crisis.
“Getting a grip on the PIP assessment backlog needs to be a priority for the UK Government. Delays in getting money to people who’re entitled to it can wreck lives.”
Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s shadow Work and Pensions secretary, said the waits were “unacceptable”.
He said: “Labour has repeatedly warned the Government over the soaring backlog of PIP claims. Ministers must urgently get a grip before even more disabled people are pushed into poverty and hardship under the Tories’ ‘Backlog Britain’.”
The DWP said successful PIP claimants will receive backdated payments.
A UK Government spokesman said: “We know work is the best route out of poverty and have seen 1.3 million more disabled people move into work over the past five years with the support of our Work Coaches and Disability Employment Advisers.
“Where people are unable to work, our priority is that disabled people receive the benefits to which they’re entitled as quickly as possible.
“We introduced PIP to replace the outdated DLA system. PIP is a fairer benefit which takes a much wider look at the way an individual’s health condition or disability impacts them on a daily basis.
“Under PIP, 35% of claimants are receiving the highest possible support, compared with just 15% under DLA.”
The latest figures from the DWP show that at the end of April, 2022 there were 3 million people across the UK claiming support through PIP.
Of the overall total, 313,620 people living in Scotland are now receiving financial support of between £24.45 and £156.90 each week and as the benefit is paid every four weeks, this amounts to between £97.80 and £627.60 every payment period.
The latest data also indicates a significant increase in the number of people claiming for psychiatric disorders, which includes autism spectrum disorders, mood disorders and learning disorders - April saw the UK-wide number of claimants for these types of conditions rise by 36,980 to 1,082,483.
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