Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment his Department has made of the implications for its policies of the report published by Z2K in June 2018, entitled Access Denied: Barriers to Justice in the Disability Benefits, on access to disability payments, including ESA and PIP.

DWP’s aim is to make the right decision as early as possible in the claim journey – and it is the case today as it was back in 2018 that the majority of decisions made are correct. In January 2019 we introduced a new approach to decision making at the Mandatory Reconsideration (MR) stage, giving Decision Makers additional time to proactively contact customers if they thought that additional evidence may support the application. This holistic approach was recommended by Z2K in its report.

Since we introduced this new, more proactive approach, the percentage of decisions that we change at the Mandatory Reconsideration stage has increased, reducing the volume of claimants going to appeal.