Alison Bennett

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) for securing this debate, which is timely because I want to highlight the case of a constituent and ask the Minister to work collaboratively with colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions to intervene urgently in what has become a deeply troubling example of administrative failure in the DWP’s Access to Work scheme. My constituent lives with cerebral palsy and ME. She wants to do exactly what Government policy encourages people to do: work, contribute and maintain her independence. To do that, she requires a wheelchair through the Access to Work programme—an essential piece of equipment that enables her to remain in employment. My constituent has done everything asked of her ever since her first application in July 2024. Her assessment was completed, quotes for a suitable chair were submitted and the case had progressed to the point of an award. Then, the system failed her. In September 2025, her case manager informed her that he was retiring, and that the case had been passed to a colleague, who would contact her. That contact never came. Despite my constituent’s repeated attempts to follow up, no one in the Access to Work scheme took ownership of the case or progressed the order. Instead, months later, she was told that her case had been closed due to “no contact” since July, which was demonstrably untrue. When my office intervened, the Department acknowledged the issue, and stated that it would contact my constituent within 10 working days. That deadline then passed. When she attempted to chase the matter herself, she spent nearly an hour on hold, only to be told that the manager was unavailable. What is perhaps most concerning is the reason now being given: the Department would prefer my constituent to submit a completely new application for the wheelchair, rather than reopen the existing case, purely because reopening it would affect its management information.