Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, when the target of upholding the original decision in 80 per cent of mandatory reconsideration requests was introduced; who made the decision to introduce that target; and for what reasons that target was introduced.

The department does not have a Mandatory Reconsideration target for upholding original decisions. The 80 per cent figure, which was used in the answer to a recent Freedom of Information request, is used to assess the accuracy of benefit decisions. In order to ensure we have consistently accurate decisions we track and monitor Mandatory Reconsiderations to assess the quality of our initial decision making and to help understand and improve our processes.