Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether her Department plans to take steps to reduce the waiting time for appeal hearings in the First-tier Tribunal (Social Security and Child Support).

We are working to reduce the outstanding caseload across the Social Entitlement Chamber of the First-tier Tribunal, which includes the Social Security and Child Support jurisdiction. This is key to reducing the waiting time for tribunal hearings.

HMCTS continues to invest in improving tribunal productivity through the recruitment of additional Judges, the deployment of Legal Officers to actively manage cases, the development of modern case management systems and the use of remote hearing technology.

Data on Tribunals performance is published by the Ministry of Justice on a quarterly basis. Receipts, disposals and the outstanding caseload for individual Chambers in the First-tier Tribunal and Upper Tribunal, the Employment Tribunal and the Employment Appeal Tribunal can be found at the link below: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/tribunals-statistics.