§ Mr. Fieldasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if, in the case of appeals from supplementary benefit appeal tribunals, he will list the number of weeks on average between (a) the filing of an application for leave to appeal on the decision of whether or not to grant leave, and (b) the claimant's filing of an application to appeal and the filing of the benefit officer's submission in reply.
§ Mrs. ChalkerThe information requested is as follows:
- (a) The average number of weeks between a claimant's application for leave to appeal being received in a local office of the Department and the commissioner's decision either granting or refusing leave, for all applications since 24 November 1980, is nine weeks.
- (b) It is not the supplementary benefit officer's normal practice to make any submission on a claimant's application for leave to appeal. On the two occasions on which he has done so, the submission was made within two weeks and six weeks respectively of the claimant's application being filed.
§ Mr. Fieldasked the Secretary of State for Social Services what arrangements he intends to make, in the light of the remarks by the Social Security Commissioner in CSB 12/81 to the effect that decisions from which there is a pending appeal should not be reviewed unless the revised decision would give the claimant all that he could get on the appeal.
§ Mrs. ChalkerIt is for the benefit officer, who is the independent adjudicating authority, to decide whether a decision in any case should be reviewed while an appeal to a tribunal from that decision is pending. As I am advised, the commissioner's recent remarks do not bar a benefit officer from reviewing a decision at that stage if he considers it proper to do so.
We have therefore no proposals to change the existing long standing procedures.