Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to page 60 of his Department's paper Government Transformation Strategy, published in February 2017, what progress the Government has made on developing a platform for making payments out; and if he will make a statement.

DWP is committed to harnessing the potential of cross-government technologies. We’ve engaged with Government Digital Service (GDS) to explore opportunities around a shared payments platform. Our focus over the last 12 months has been to move DWP’s payments platform to a more modern, secure and efficient cloud hosting environment. Once achieved, we will work with GDS to progress development of a shared payments platform for government.