Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the oral contribution of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Family support, housing and child maintenance to the Work and Pensions Select Committee on 21 November 2018, what progress has been made on introducing implicit consent in universal credit for organisations offering support to claimants.

We have had a number of workshops with stakeholders during which consent has been discussed. As we said in our response to the Social Security Advisory Committee, we will do further work on explicit consent. This activity will include working with claimants and their representatives to ensure the process works effectively for vulnerable claimants to access the service. We expect to complete this in the autumn.