Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her department has taken to help ensure that decision making on new claims for disability benefits continues during the covid-19 outbreak.

The Department’s immediate focus has been supporting people impacted by COVID-19 by putting claims into payment as quickly as possible and being flexible in our response to the challenges claimants are facing while keeping them safe.

I should emphasis that for all disability benefits, people should not delay making a claim because of difficulties in providing supporting medical information. We will continue to process claims and work with claimants to gather the best supporting evidence available.

We are continuing to refer people making new claims for disability benefits to health assessments. Where it is not possible to complete an assessment based on the paper evidence, a telephony assessment will be arranged where possible and appropriate.