Social Security Benefits: Deductions
(asked on 12th June 2023) - View Source
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many benefits claimants have had third-party deductions taken directly from their benefits payments in each of the past 10 years.
Third Party Deductions information is only available from 2018.
Table 1 provides the volume of households subject to at least one Third Party Deduction for each financial year from April 2018 to February 2023. The latest figures show that between April 2022 and February 2023 there were 912,200 households on Universal Credit that had at least one Third Party Deduction.
Table 1: Number of Universal Credit households in Great Britain with at least one Third Party Deduction for the time periods shown | |
Date | Number of households |
Apr-18 to Mar-19 | 179,500 |
Apr-19 to Mar-20 | 594,000 |
Apr-20 to Mar-21 | 823,100 |
Apr-21 to Mar-22 | 917,900 |
Apr-22 to Feb-23 | 912,200 |
Notes:
1. The number of households have been rounded to the nearest hundred.
2. Household level figures have been provided. Please note that some households will have more than one Third Party Deduction within the time period provided. The volumes capture households that have at least one deduction in that time period.
3. Third Party Deductions contains debt types such as rent arrears, court fines and child maintenance (Last Resort Deductions and Enforcing Social Obligations Deductions).
4. Complete data for Third Party Debts is only available from 2018.
5. Data up to February 2023 has been provided in line with the latest available UC Household Statistics.
6. The data for 2018/19 only provides data for Universal Credit full-service claims. Data on Universal Credit live service for 2018/19 is not available. In May 2016 the Universal Credit full service for all claimant types began to rollout nationally and was completed by the end of 2018.
7. Comparison across the different financial years is problematic due to changes in the deductions policy for Universal Credit, which would have affected the number of households having a Third-Party Deduction.
8. Figures have been provided for Universal Credit households in Great Britain. Northern Ireland claims are administered by the Department for Communities.
9. Figures are provisional and are subject to retrospective change as later data becomes available.
10. The methodology used is different to those used to derive the Official Statistics Household series and therefore, figures may not be comparable.