Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether her Department is taking into account the experiences of recipients of universal credit for formulating future policy.

Universal Credit has a comprehensive evaluation framework which sets out the strategy for all evaluation including analysis of the claimant experience and how evaluation is used to formulate future policy:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/universal-credit-evaluation-framework-2016

Since publication of the framework the Department has continued to build evidence on the experiences of claimants on Universal Credit, through a number of pieces of research and evaluation. For example, the Universal Credit Full Service Claimant Survey published in June 2018 explored areas such as claimants’ experiences of registering a claim and understanding of Universal Credit, their job search activity and attitudes to work, and their experiences of budgeting and sanctioning:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/universal-credit-full-service-claimant-survey

Similarly, the Universal Credit Test and Learn Evaluation: Families, published in September 2017, consisted of qualitative and quantitative research into the experience of families in order to provide timely and operationally relevant evidence to support the continual improvement and further rollout of Universal Credit. And to provide early evidence on whether the policy intent is understood and is being met, and on whether labour market behaviours (and outcomes) are affected:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/universal-credit-test-and-learn-evaluation-families