Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to his Department's freedom of information response 1740 of 15 May 2017, what factors his Department took into consideration in setting the 80 per cent of the original decisions are to be upheld measure for monitoring mandatory reconsideration; and if he will make a statement.

The department has not set a target for upholding original decisions at Mandatory Reconsideration. The 80 per cent figure, which was used in the answer to Freedom of Information request 1740, is not considered by the decision maker when they carry out a Mandatory Reconsideration but is used to assess the quality of benefit decisions. In order to ensure we have consistently accurate decisions we track and monitor Mandatory Reconsiderations to assess the quality of our initial decision making and to help understand and improve our processes.