Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment she has made of compliance with the duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people under the Equality Act 2010.

The department is committed to providing services which embrace diversity and promote equality of opportunity. This means we need to take steps to ensure that our customers have access to reasonable adjustments, and we often provide additional support to enable them to access benefits and our services. We regularly hold discussions of this kind with stakeholders and statutory bodies in order to improve our services.

The department has in place a wide range of reasonable adjustments for customers, including:

• Email as a reasonable adjustment;
• Face-to-face British Sign Language (BSL) interpretation;
• A visiting service for vulnerable customers who are unable to use our other contact routes;
• Support for our staff including instructions, guides and awareness raising on reasonable adjustments;
• Video Relay Service which enables customers to communicate in real time with DWP via a BSL interpreter using a video connection on an electronic device. There’s no need to be in the same location or for the customer to make an appointment;
• A flexible approach to mandatory face-to-face interviews within a Jobcentre;
• 15 Autism accredited Jobcentres;
• Public Sector Equality training rolled out.