Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is taking to tackle situations in which benefits may have been wrongly ended as a result of a lack of medical evidence related to the covid-19 outbreak.

DWP is not aware that there is a widespread issue where claims have been wrongly ended as a result of a lack of medical evidence. It might be helpful to note that to ensure ESA claimants received their payments on time, there was an easement in place on the requirement for medical evidence from the start of pandemic until summer 2020, when claimants could not easily access GPs. A similar easement was also applied between 17 December 2021 and 26 January 2022, to allow GPs to support the Covid-19 vaccine booster campaign.