Work and Pensions written question – answered at on 2 October 2006.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will make a statement about percentage rates of people with neurological conditions who had been claiming incapacity benefit for over 12 months when starting work-focused interviews, compared to other people claiming incapacity benefit for over 12 months.
Mandatory work-focused interviews for incapacity benefit customers occur eight weeks after the start of their benefit claim. Therefore no one who started the mandatory work-focused interview process has been in receipt of incapacity benefits for over 12 months.
The exception to this is participants in the mandatory extension of Pathways to Work. They are identified as those being in receipt of benefit between one and three years at the time the mandatory extension commenced. Therefore they have all been in receipt of incapacity benefits for over 12 months.
Only in the first 12 months after roll out would voluntary participants in Pathways to Work have been in receipt of incapacity benefits for less than 12 months. After that period they will all have been in receipt of incapacity benefits for over 12 months as all fresh claims will have been captured by work-focused interviews through Pathways to Work.
Establishing percentage rates of people with neurological conditions who had been claiming incapacity benefit for over 12 months when volunteering for work-focused interviews compared to other people claiming incapacity benefit for over 12 months in that initial period can be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
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