Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what comparative assessment she has made of the effectiveness of a return to face-to-face appointments for groups of claimants in job centres and other channels including telephone and digital that were introduced in response to the covid-19 outbreak.

No comparative assessment of face-to-face appointments for groups of claimants in jobcentres and other channels has currently been made.

The return to a face-to-face regime is based on evidence from past large scale trials of what interventions work best for out of work benefits claimants. These show that face-to-face performs better than telephony and that seeing a claimant fortnightly produces substantially better outcomes than not seeing claimants at all.

https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130314010347/http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/rrs-index.asp (report 382)