Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the number of cases in which officials engaged in verifying the eligibility of applicants for tax credits where issues relating to their single status were an issue did not provide information advising how single status could be established in the last 12 months.

During 2013-14 the total number of interventions carried out on single person tax credit claims with a suspicion of an undeclared partner was 140,923. HMRC amended 28,516 awards as a result of these investigations. HMRC do not hold data on the number of applicants who failed to provide information relating to their single status.