Department for Work and Pensions written question – answered at on 27 October 2025.
Daisy Cooper
Deputy Leader, Liberal Democrats, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson (Treasury)
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 16 October 2025 to Question 77147 on Personal Independence Payment, if he will make it his policy to collect data on the impact of registration of an appointee on a person's PIP payments to track the number of times benefits are inadvertently (a) missed, (b) delayed and (c) stopped.
Stephen Timms
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, Minister for Equalities (Department for Education)
There are no plans to collect this data.
We aim to process applications for appointeeship as soon as possible to avoid delays. It is important that the department conducts checks to ensure that an appointee is both suitable to act and needed by the claimant. Entitlement to PIP would be from the date of claim, meaning the claimant would not lose entitlement because of the appointeeship process.
Payments of benefit are the same whether a claimant has an appointee or not.
Payments would not be inadvertently stopped because someone has an appointee. Payment can be suspended if concerns are raised about the appointee’s suitability to act, or if there are doubts about the claimant’s entitlement.
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Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
