Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what processes there are in her Department to monitor how often correspondence or evidence submitted to it by claimants, their representatives or other parties is reported as mislaid or lost.

Over 70% of all documents that are received by the Department and relate to a benefit claim are scanned on receipt.

The Reconciliation Analysis Process (RAP) is a process that allows a user to check whether all items of scanned post have been delivered by the end to end mail opening and scanning solution to the appropriate endpoint. As part of the RAP, there is a tool that takes in all the files produced by each of the components in the chain and performs analysis to produce output reports to highlight any problem areas. The reconciliation is carried out on a daily basis.

Mail for benefits that is not scanned is processed according to the reports instructions and forwarded by courier. Tracking of individual items is only available for post sent recorded or special delivery.