Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what changes she has made to the universal credit system to comply with the Court of Appeal judgement of 22 June 2020 on assessing two wage payments received within a single assessment period.

The Universal Credit (Earned Income) Amendment Regulations 2020 were laid in October 2020, so for cases affected by this issue, monthly earnings can be reallocated to another assessment period. To support this, we have designed a tool which interacts with the Universal Credit Service to allow the redistribution of earnings where appropriate, with guidance having been issued to staff to ensure that where an issue is identified, the correct remedial action is taken.

Automated identification of affected claimants is expected to be implemented in early 2021. This will allow us to proactively correct Universal Credit awards before they are paid without the claimant needing to raise the issue.