Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 3 March 2020 to Questions 21930, 219331, 219332 and 21933, for what reasons the information requested is not readily available.

A DS1500 can be completed during the claim process for various benefits: Personal Independence Payment (PIP), Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), Universal Credit (UC), Attendance Allowance (AA) and Disability Living Allowance (DLA).

We do not record receipt of the DS1500 centrally for all benefits. Whilst the Department does collect some information on DS1500 forms providing the requested data would necessitate complex data matching; and the extraction of the data requested would require significant time applying specialist knowledge and a high level of skill. This task, in addition to assessing the completeness of recording on DS1500 forms, and quality assuring the figures would therefore take in excess of four working days and exceed the appropriate cost limit for central Government.