Social Security Benefits: Reform
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the Green Paper entitled Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working, published on 18 March 2025, what criteria she plans to use to identify claimants with serious and lifelong health conditions to ensure they will never face reassessment.
Answered by Sir Stephen Timms
The assessment process is an important part of claiming PIP and WCA to ensure that people receive the right level of support.
However, for some people with very severe health conditions and disabilities, by the time they come to make a claim, they have already undergone intensive assessments and provided detailed evidence about their condition to receive support from other services. That is why in PIP, we are also exploring ways in which we could use evidence from eligibility for other services to reduce the need for some people with very severe health conditions to undergo a full PIP functional assessment. For example, for young people with very severe long-term conditions who have already been assessed for and awarded support from Disability Living Allowance for children before claiming PIP for the first time.
For those on UC with the most severe, life-long, conditions who we know will never be able to work, we will aim to exempt them from ever needing to be reassessed.
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