Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will set out what (a) support and (b) safeguards are in place to assist adults with intellectual disabilities in completing benefit application forms; and whether information provided when applying for a welfare benefit can be (a) transferred and (b) reused in subsequent applications.

The Department is committed to pursuing a just, equal and inclusive society, ensuring independence and control for all customers, including all disabled people and those with complex needs. This means we need to ensure that our customers have access to reasonable adjustments or additional support, to enable them to access benefits and our services.

We aim to support customers to access services independently but recognise some customers need the support of an appointee. The Department has a robust end-to-end process to fully assess both the customer and the proposed appointee to ensure suitability and prevent financial abuse. For customers without an appointee, and unable to complete forms through other channels, the DWP Visiting service can conduct home visits to provide support. Support is also offered within our Job centres.

The national DWP Visiting Service provides additional support across all service lines to customers who cannot access DWP services in any other way. A visit can be arranged for a customer if they need extra help to claim benefits, for example because they have complex needs, are disabled, are a vulnerable young person making a claim for the first time, have nobody else to support them or cannot claim benefits in any other way. Support visits if you need help to claim benefits - GOV.UK. Where further specialist help is required, DWP has a national network of 37 Advanced Customer Support Senior Leaders who can provide additional advice and support through the local networks they have built with external partners and organisations.

In some benefits there is an opportunity to share information. For example, Case Managers will occasionally cross reference information held on previous Employment Support Allowance (ESA) claims to build a more complete picture, where it is felt there are gaps or inconsistencies in evidence provided. However, specific information is required to support a Personal Independence Payment (PIP) claim to assess functionality across a range of activities. In this scenario, information provided for the purposes of other benefit claims would not be sufficient for this purpose. A further example of where information is shared across benefits would relate to an SR1 claim - special rules for end of life.

The Department continues to review the experience of users of its services and seeks to balance application simplicity with obtaining the information needed for an accurate award. A key objective of the DWPs Service Modernisation Programme is assessing how people locate, access, and navigate support, including making new applications and ensuring that services are designed around the needs of DWP customers and joined up wherever it is possible to do so.