Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of automating eligible claimants' entitlement to the disabled child addition to Universal Credit.

DWP’s digital application process uses automated prompts to identify where a claimant has a disabled child and guides them through the relevant eligibility criteria, helping ensure the correct addition is applied at the point of claim. This is currently the primary mechanism to identify likely eligibility and raise claimant awareness at the point of claiming UC.

The Department keeps all aspects of Universal Credit under review to ensure the system remains responsive, accurate and efficient. Our processes are dynamic, and we routinely explore opportunities to introduce further automation to streamline the process and further improve the claimant experience, including where claims to other benefits have been made.