Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is taking to monitoring the effectiveness of its systems in managing increased demand during the covid-19 outbreak; and what data her Department holds on (a) processing times and (b) payment timeliness across all benefits during the covid-19 outbreak.

The Department has a robust and effective performance management regime, tracking performance across all social security benefits using a range of metrics. When COVID-19 struck in mid-March, we accelerated our normal reporting from monthly or weekly, to be able to track the daily profiles of incoming work and telephone calls and support a focus on managing significantly increased demand on key benefits.

We do hold data on benefit processing times, and publish an annual view in the Annual Report and Accounts, which is published here: Annual Report and Accounts. We also publish data on key benefits such as Universal Credit payment timeliness, which is published here: Universal Credit 2013-2020 and on PIP processing times which is published here:

PIP Statistics.