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Universal Credit

Question for Department for Work and Pensions

UIN 266717, tabled on 19 June 2019

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 18 June 2019 to Question 264329, of the 0.749 million claimants with deductions from universal credit for non-universal credit debts, how much debt has been repaid from each benefit in the Prescribed Social Security Benefits / Payments category.

Answered on

24 June 2019

The table below details the amount recovered from Universal Credit to repay non-Universal Credit overpayments in 2018-19. To provide a full picture we have included recovery of all benefit related debt including such things as non UC Advances and Tax Credit recoveries even though these are not strictly prescribed payments.

Benefit

Amount Recovered

Attendance Allowance

£1,000

Administrative Penalty

£537,000

Bereavement Allowance

£3,000

Carers Allowance

£1,541,000

Civil Penalties

£1,090,000

Disability Living Allowance

£281,000

Disability Working Allowance

Less than £1,000

Employment & Support Allowance

£2,988,000

Family Credit

£1,000

Housing Benefit

£11,198,000

Incapacity Benefit

£368,000

Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit

£1,000

Income Support

£8,479,000

Invalidity Benefit

Less than £1,000

Jobseeker's Allowance

£3,987,000

Maternity Allowance

£13,000

Non-Contributory Retirement Pension

Less than £1,000

New State Pension

Less than £1,000

Pension Credit

£11,000

Personal Independence Payment

£64,000

Retirement Pension: Contributory

£2,000

Sickness Benefit

£1,000

Severe Disablement Allowance

£12,000

Social Fund Loan

£27,014,000

Social Fund Overpayment

£239,000

Non - Universal Credit short term advances

£1,546,000

Tax Credit Overpayment

£94,722,000

Widow's Benefit

£70,000

Widowed Mother's Allowance

Less than £1,000

Widows Pension

£1,000

Widowed Parent's Allowance

£3,000

Christmas Bonus

£1,000

Other

£3,000

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.

*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. All figures have been rounded to the nearest thousand.

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