Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate he has made of the number of universal credit claimants in employment who have restarted their claim having been paid twice during a single assessment period.

The information requested is not readily available and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.

However, over the last year around 21,000 UC Full Service claims have been closed because the household’s earnings exceeded the threshold. Of these, around 12% have made a re-claim within a month. We do not know how many of these will have had two paydays in one assessment period.