Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government why they are relying on telephone assessments to determine a claimant’s level of disability rather than using a video service.

We are committed to improving the experience of health and disability benefits and we are currently delivering health and disability assessments via a variety of channels. Face-to-face assessments are being delivered alongside new telephone and video assessments introduced in response to the pandemic.

A programme of in-house analysis and externally commissioned research into the outcomes from and experiences of the newly introduced assessment channels is underway. The Health and Disability Green Paper will offer an opportunity to hear views on how we can improve assessments, including how we might provide a multi-channel health assessment service. Any future decisions about channel will be evidence-based and to ensure this we will draw on existing evidence as well as continuing to build our understanding via research and analysis.