Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people in receipt of (a) personal independence payment and (b) disability living allowance were (i) entitled to the £10 Christmas bonus and (ii) received that Christmas bonus in 2018.

The Christmas Bonus is a one-off tax-free £10 payment paid to claimants who receive certain qualifying benefits including Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and Disability Living Allowance (DLA). To qualify, the claimant must be in receipt of the qualifying benefit in the qualifying week which is normally the first full week of December. If a DLA or PIP claimant receives another qualifying benefit their bonus may be attached to that benefit rather than to their PIP or DLA award.

The Department publishes a range of detailed statistics for PIP and DLA on Stat-Xplore: https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/. These statistics include monthly caseloads (claims in payment) to August 2018 for DLA and to October 2018 for PIP. Caseloads for December 2018 have not yet been published.

Guidance on how to use Stat-Xplore can be found here: https://sw.stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/index.html.

The number of claimants, regardless of qualifying benefit, who received the Christmas Bonus in 2017/18 can be found in Table 1c of the “Outturn and forecast: Autumn Budget 2018 (XLS)” spreadsheet in the 2018 Benefit Expenditure and Caseload tables. Outturn figures for 2018/19 will be published in due course.