Thanks for contacting me about Personal Independence Payments (PIP).
As Co-Chairman of the All Party Group for Learning Disabilities, I had already had a meeting with the Minister for Disabled where I raised my concerns over the proposed benefit changes on the Budget Day itself and, last Thursday, I wrote to the Chancellor to further raise these concerns with him (the letter was coordinated by the Conservative MP for Brigg and Goole, Andrew Percy).
Since then, events have moved this debate on and as you know we now have the Rt. Hon Stephen Crabb MP as the new Secretary of State for the Department of Work and Pensions. Yesterday he announced that there would be no changes to PIP in the remaining four years of this parliament.
Personally, I would still like to see some changes to the assessment that goes alongside PIP, as I have raised the quality of these several times since PIP was introduced. If we could improve these and ensure that existing medical information was evaluated pre-assessment I think we could actually save a lot of money by reducing the need for tribunals...
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