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Written question asked by Chris Williamson (Independent (affiliation)) on Thursday, 27 June 2019, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 1 July 2019. It was answered by Lord Sharma (Conservative) on Friday, 5 July 2019 on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions.

Universal Credit

Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the effect of the (a) wait for payment and (b) monthly payment of universal credit on the number of weeks of benefit paid annually to claimants compared with the number they were paid under their legacy benefits.

Answer

There is no need to wait for a Universal Credit payment, as 100 per cent advances are available from day one of a claim. Advance payments are simply an advance of entitlement, meaning that by month 12 of a claim, a claimant would normally have received exactly the same Universal Credit regardless of whether they had an advance or not.

Furthermore, frequency of payment should not affect the total amount of Universal Credit paid over the course of a year. Whilst legacy benefits were paid in two-weekly arrears, Universal Credit is paid in monthly arrears to help reduce welfare dependency by mirroring the world of work, where currently around 70 per cent of tax credit claimants are paid monthly or four weekly.

We know that claimants are currently not getting all the entitlements for which they are eligible on legacy benefits. Requiring claimants to make a new Universal Credit claim will ensure that people will not miss out on any entitlements. This will result in an additional £2.4 billion going to 700,000 families who currently do not take up their full benefit entitlement.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
270345
Session
2017-19
Subjects
Payments Universal credit
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk