Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to improve his Department's response times to correspondence.

The Department is clear that timely responses to correspondence are important. Recent delays have arisen from increased volumes and complexity of cases, including as customers move onto Universal Credit as part of our planned migration from legacy benefits.

We are taking active steps to improve performance, including recruiting and training additional staff to handle correspondence and complaints. These measures are already helping to reduce backlogs and will continue to improve response times as capacity builds.