Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the merits of only having face-to-face medical assessments for disability benefits if that is requested by the claimant.

Face-to-face consultations give individuals the opportunity to put across their own views of the impact of their health condition or impairment on their everyday lives. However, we recognise that attending a Personal Independence Payment (PIP) assessment or Work Capability Assessment (WCA) can be a stressful experience, which is why our Assessment Providers do not carry out face-to-face assessments where there is enough existing evidence to determine an individual’s functional restrictions.

Our ambition is to make the assessment process simpler and more user-friendly by, where possible, gathering better evidence earlier in the claim to reduce the need for unnecessary face-to-face assessments.