Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, when he expects that deaf people will be able to begin a claim for personal independence payments (a) by email and (b) online.

The Department is currently trialling a process where deaf claimants or their representative organisations can email to ask for a paper claim. In addition work is continuing to design and introduce a PIP digital claim as part of the wider PIP service. We are working closely with the Cabinet Office to ensure this meets the government standards for digital services which focuses on the needs of users and will be accessible. We are looking to invite a small number of claimants to use the digital service in 2015. This will allow us to test and learn and continually improve the service before wider deployment.