Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many incidents of serious harm have been reported to her Department since February 2012; what proportion of those incidents met the criteria to trigger an internal process review; and if she will provide a breakdown of the different categories of serious harm.

Internal Process Reviews (IPRs) are internal retrospective investigations, focussed on organisational learning and were started in 2015. The Department began capturing data on ‘Serious Harm’ at this point as well. Due to record keeping practices at that time, we do not have records of review categories prior to 2015.

IPRs are conducted when:

• there is a suggestion or allegation that the Department’s actions or omissions may have negatively contributed to the customer’s circumstances, or cases in which the department may be able to learn about the operation of its processes, AND a customer has suffered serious harm, has died (including by suicide), or where we have reason to believe there has been an attempted suicide.
• the Department is asked to participate in an external Safeguarding Adults Board or is named as an Interested Party at an Inquest. An Internal Process Review will be conducted - regardless of whether there is an allegation against the Department.

There have been 61 IPRs triggered since 2015 that involved serious harm. This figure is broken down into the following review sub-categories: