Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent estimate her Department has made of the value of unclaimed benefits.
On 29th October 2020 the Department for Work and Pensions published the report “Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up: financial year 2018 to 2019”. The full report is available online.
For Great Britain, the following estimates are available for 2018/19:
Pension Credit: Up to £1.8 billion of available Pension Credit went unclaimed;
Housing Benefit: Up to £3.4 billion of available Housing Benefit went unclaimed;
Income Support / Income-related Employment and Support Allowance: Up to £1.2 billion of available Income Support / Income-related Employment and Support Allowance went unclaimed.
Estimates are not available for other DWP benefits, including Universal Credit.