Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of expanding the use of e-mail to communicate with his Department's customers.

Answered by Paul Maynard

DWP utilises technology which allows encryption with most providers of personal email services, such as Gmail or Outlook, helping this stay secure. As such, email communication with customers is currently permitted in certain circumstances, for example, where the customer has a reasonable adjustment in place.

The Department is keen to utilise the benefits provided by email communication, as part of its work in modernising customer contact channels to deliver modernised services. The department is currently exploring a number of specific possibilities to expand its use of outbound email to communicate with customers, recently testing sending of notifications via email to overseas customers in areas where the postal system is unreliable.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of offering secured e-mail as a communications option for his Department's customers upon request.

Answered by Paul Maynard

DWP utilises technology which allows encryption with most providers of personal email services, such as Gmail or Outlook, helping this stay secure. As such, email communication with customers is currently permitted in certain circumstances, for example, where the customer has a reasonable adjustment in place.

The Department is keen to utilise the benefits provided by email communication and is currently exploring the possibilities of expanding its use of email to communicate with customers.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether any Minister in his Department has sent Departmental information from their personal email addresses since December 2019.

Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities

The Cabinet Office has published guidance to departments on the use of private email that covers how information is held for the purposes of access to information, and how formal decisions are recorded for the official record. This guidance is being updated to reflect changes in technology and ways of working, and will be published by the Cabinet Office in due course.

It is Government policy not to comment on individual Ministers’ security arrangements. Ministers receive support and expert advice to help them meet their obligations in the most appropriate and secure fashion. That includes regular security briefings for Ministers, and advice on protecting their personal data and mitigating cyber threats.

Found: homepage Contact Details Participation and Contributions Team Pensions and Later Life Analysis Department

Found: homepage Contact Details Participation and Contributions Team Pensions and Later Life Analysis Department