Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the Written Statement of 9 July 2020 on Health Transformation Programme update, what assessment her Department has made of their experience of delivering services during the covid-19 outbreak.

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Department made a number of changes to health and disability benefits to safeguard the health of claimants and staff and to prioritise new claims and continuity of awards. These changes included:

• introducing the digital version of the PIP2 form, earlier than planned;
• suspending all face-to-face assessments and introducing telephone-based assessments and video assessments, in addition to paper-based assessments;
• enabling companions to join telephony assessments for further social support, as they would have done for a face-to-face assessment; and
• progressing assessments on the basis of the paper-based evidence alone, or that evidence together with a telephone assessment, to ensure decisions on Personal Independence Payments were be made without delay.

The electronic and online PIP2 service, introduced at small scale during the pandemic, is being rolled out in a way that ensures that the system operates as smoothly as possible and we provide a positive claimant experience.

We are currently assessing these remote assessment channels. Findings from a survey of PIP and ESA/UC claimants who received a telephone assessment were published alongside the Green Paper. The Green Paper consultation has offered an opportunity to hear views on how we can improve assessments, including how we might provide a multi-channel health assessment service.