Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) personal independence payment, (b) employment support allowance and (c) work related activity component face to face tribunals are waiting for hearings to be listed.

The information requested is not held centrally.

First-tier Tribunal (Social Security and Child Support) (SSCS) data are published at: www.gov.uk/government/collections/tribunals-statistics

The latest period for which a full data set about SSCS is available is March 2020. The most recent tribunal statistics (for the period up until December 2020) do not include some SSCS data due to issues identified as the Tribunal was being migrated to a new operational system. This data will be made available as soon as this is resolved and the data quality assured.

The decision as to how a hearing is conducted is a matter for the judge, who will determine how best to uphold the interests of justice.

Throughout the pandemic, appeals continued to be decided on paper, or heard using telephone, and other remote technology. HMCTS introduced safety measures so that face to face hearings could be held for any cases which could not be decided on paper or heard remotely.