Social Security Benefits: Medical Examinations
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 Green Paper, published on 18 March 2025, if she will take steps to prevent people with (a) lifelong and severely disabling illnesses and (b) Myalgic Encephalomyelitis from having to undergo repeated reassessments.
Answered by Sir Stephen Timms
Our wide-ranging package of reforms to health and disability benefits, set out in the Pathways to Work Green Paper, will improve experiences of the system for those who need it. The functional impact and severity of a condition can significantly vary across individuals, so we are not planning to exempt specific conditions, but we are planning to reduce reassessments for those with the most severe conditions.
We aim to guarantee that for both new and existing Universal Credit claims, those with the most severe, life-long health conditions, who will never be able to work, will not need to be reassessed in the future. Our plans to improve experiences of Personal Independence Payment also include reducing assessments for this group. We are exploring ways we could use evidence from eligibility for other services to reduce the need for some people with very severe health conditions and disabilities to undergo a full PIP functional assessment.
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