Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, reference to the Written Statement of 5 March 2019, Health and Disability Announcement, HCWS1376, whether there will be a pilot of the integration of assessment services due to be implemented from 2021.

The Health Transformation Programme within DWP has been established to transform the currently separate Work Capability Assessment service for ESA and UC, and the PIP assessment service, into an integrated service from 2021. As with any major change, this will take time to design, and it will be rolled out carefully – learning as we go. We will be considering how we test elements of the new service and the end to end customer journey to understand what works in order to ensure the quality of the new service.