Parliamentary Search

Written question asked by Lord Field of Birkenhead (Independent (affiliation)) on Monday, 24 June 2019, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 27 June 2019 (named day). It was answered by Lord Sharma (Conservative) on Thursday, 27 June 2019 on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions.

Social Security Benefits

Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 24 June 2019 to Question 264329, of the 749,000 claimants with deductions from universal credit for non-universal credit debts, how many claimants are repaying debts in each of the Prescribed Social Security Benefits / Payments categories.

Answer

As at 24 June 2019, 593k of the 749k debtors are currently repaying debts*. DWP is unable to break this down by benefit.

The Department works hard to prevent potential benefit overpayments from occurring. Internal and external data matches are increasingly helping inform benefit payments and alerting staff to check for any undeclared changes in people’s circumstances in real time.

Where overpayments do occur, the Department ensures that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect claimants who are subject to deductions to repay these overpayments.

*The data provided in this response has been sourced from internal management information and was not intended for public release. It should therefore not be compared to any other, similar data subsequently released by the Department.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
268401
Session
2017-19
Related items
Universal Credit
Tuesday, 18 June 2019
Written questions
House of Commons
Social Security Benefits
Monday, 15 July 2019
Written questions
House of Commons
Subjects
Debts Social security benefits Repayments
Contains statistics
Yes
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk