Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent progress his Department has made with NHS Digital on sharing information between IT systems managed by (a) his Department, (b) hospitals and (c) GPs to help standardise information earlier in the assessment process.

Transforming Support: The Health and Disability White Paper published on 15 March 2023 sets out that we will work with NHS England to explore accessing relevant NHS medical information, with appropriate consent from claimants.

Discussions are ongoing and we are currently exploring how information is shared between the DWP, hospital and GP IT systems. We are also exploring improvements with the aim of speeding up decision making for claimants and reducing the burden on medical professionals having to supply additional information later in the application process.