Personal independence payment delays 'unacceptable', says top civil servant

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/dec/11/personal-independence-payment-delays-unacceptable

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Delays in paying benefits to terminally ill people were unacceptable and some claimants went through "awful experiences" waiting for payments, the senior civil servant responsible for sickness benefits has admitted.

Asked why a significant number of cancer patients had died before their claim for the new personal independence payment (PIP) was processed, the new minister for disabled people, Mike Penning, said it was critical to improve the service for terminally ill people. "We have to get it right because these people need the help as fast as they can get it," he told MPs on the work and pensions select committee.

Hundreds of terminally ill cancer patients faced long waits of weeks and months to receive income support because of changes made to the way the system is administered after the government introduced PIP, which replaced disability living allowance, earlier this year.

Previously a claim for the benefit took eight to 10 days, but cancer charities warned last month that payments were taking as long as eight to 10 weeks to process.

The benefits director at the Department for Work and Pensions, Jason Feeney, said the service had not been "up to scratch".

"As the operational director for delivering PIP, I would absolutely say that the service that we gave for some terminally ill claimants at the beginning of PIP wasn't up to the standard, where we would be expecting it to be. I'm not going to try to pretend otherwise. There were some awful experiences that people went through," he told MPs. "The service wasn't where we wanted it to be."

He said a number of changes to the process had been made to ensure that long delays were avoided.

Penning, who has been minister for disabled people since September, said he wanted terminally ill people to be able to make the claim and receive the payment within a seven-day period, but added that he was reluctant to introduce targets to ensure that this time frame was met.

Asked how he was going to enforce the seven-day goal without targets, he replied: "My size 10 boots."

"I have a passion about this. Not just because it's something that has touched my life, but because it is a moral position," he said. "While I am the minister, I want to see seven days. I can't see why we can't achieve seven days or even less."

Duleep Allirajah, head of policy at Macmillan Cancer Support, said: "Terminally ill cancer patients are facing severe delays in receiving their benefits under the new personal independence payment special rules claim. We know that a quarter of our benefits advisers surveyed have come across someone who has died before receiving their benefit – this is simply deplorable.

"We have raised these concerns with the government and are hopeful that working together we can develop a solution. We want them to set targets to process all claims in eight to 10 days as a matter of urgency."

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