Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment the Department has made of the impact of digital-only communications on claimant engagement and error rates.

DWP are continuing to explore the choice of contact channel to reduce the cost of benefits administration and meet the needs of our customers for faster communication. This is based on customer research. While some customers are already able to access messages digitally this is not the only way in which we communicate with those customers. In the future we expect to expand the scope of our digital communications, but with a customer preference capability to allow customers to control which channel they choose and take account of accessibility needs. All new services and capabilities are assessed for impact on error rates