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
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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, what is the (a) mean and (b) median average debt owed by claimants in each of the Prescribed Social Security Benefits / Payments categories.
- Answer
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Of the 749k debtors that made a payment in 2018/19, the Mean current balance per debtor is £1,740.68 and the Median current balance per debtor is £757.20.* 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
- 268402
- Session
- 2017-19
- Related items
- Subjects
- Debts Social security benefits
- Contains statistics
- Yes
- Link
- View this Written question on www.parliament.uk
Librarians' tools
- Timestamp
- 2019-10-02 12:36:42 +0100
- URI
- http://data.parliament.uk/writtenparliamentaryquestion/commons/2017-19/268402
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