Welfare Reform Bill — Clause 79 — Personal Independence Payment — Qualifying Period — 15 Jun 2011 at 18:00

The majority of MPs voted against reducing the period claimants with health conditions must wait before they are eligible for personal independence payments from from six to three months.

Under consideration was the time period over which an individual's health is considered for the purposes of the "daily living" and "mobility" components which together make up the Personal Independence Payment.

Prior to the consideration of the rejected amendment which was the subject of this vote clause 79 of the Welfare Reform Bill[1] required assessments eligibility of an individual's physical or mental condition to be carried out to determine:

  • whether, as respects every time in the previous 6 months, it is likely that if the relevant ability had been assessed at that time that ability would have been determined to be limited or (as the case may be) severely limited by the person’s physical or mental condition

Margaret Curran MP (Glasgow East, Labour) proposed the rejected amendment to reduce the time period in that clause from 6 to 4 months. The text of her amendment was:

  • page 56, line 45, leave out ‘6’ and insert ‘3’.

During the debate Margaret Curran explained her proposed amendment:

  • would retain the three-month period that claimants must wait before they are eligible to receive PIP

During the Welfare Reform Bill Committee on the 10th of May 2011[3], Minister Maria Miller stated:

  • the principal aim of extending the qualifying period from three to six months is not about savings. We do not expect the measure to provide any significant savings. It is a principled measure to bring PIP in line with the common definition of disability used in the Equality Act 2010, to provide an appropriate measure of long-term disability that can be robustly assessed, and to align with the qualifying period for attendance allowance.

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Debate in Parliament | Source |

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Party Summary

Votes by party, red entries are votes against the majority for that party.

What is Tell? '+1 tell' means that in addition one member of that party was a teller for that division lobby.

What are Boths? An MP can vote both aye and no in the same division. The boths page explains this.

What is Turnout? This is measured against the total membership of the party at the time of the vote.

PartyMajority (No)Minority (Aye)BothTurnout
Alliance0 10100.0%
Con255 (+2 tell) 0084.0%
DUP0 5062.5%
Green0 10100.0%
Independent0 10100.0%
Lab0 222 (+2 tell)087.2%
LDem39 1070.2%
PC0 2066.7%
SDLP0 1033.3%
SNP0 5083.3%
Total:294 239083.5%

Rebel Voters - sorted by party

MPs for which their vote in this division differed from the majority vote of their party. You can see all votes in this division, or every eligible MP who could have voted in this division

Sort by: Name | Constituency | Party | Vote

NameConstituencyPartyVote
Greg MulhollandLeeds North WestLDem (front bench)aye

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