Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of increasing (a) digitalisation and (b) automation in the provision of welfare services.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has already implemented many automation initiatives and remains dedicated to identifying future opportunities for further enhancements. To date, 58 automations have been deployed across the DWP, with 38 of them currently active. These automation processes have handled a total of 44.46 million claims and saved 3.4 million staff hours.

We will continue to explore additional automation and digitisation prospects which will help reduce operating costs, enabling agents to dedicate more time to citizens, and expedite claims processing where possible.