Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to paragraph 4.148 of the Spring Budget 2023, HC1183, if he will publish the error rate data which informed this policy decision.

There are no plans to automate the decision making or the application of the sanction’s regime, which will continue to be undertaken by Work Coaches and Decision Makers.

However, feedback from Work Coaches tells us that to create the original referral form for claimants that missed mandatory appointments is very slow and requires them to manually input all the required information. Any data input incorrectly would invalidate the referral meaning any associated decision could not be progressed. So, we are automating the creation of this form. The referral form will then be reviewed by the Work Coach and submitted to the Decision Maker to take the ultimate decision, in the normal way.

We continually use a range of evidence to make improvements in our processes and in turn save taxpayers money.