Christmas Bonus: Non-payment

(asked on 12th March 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people have contacted her Department since 1 December 2018 on non-payment of the 2018 Christmas bonus.


Answered by
Guy Opperman Portrait
Guy Opperman
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
This question was answered on 15th March 2019

The Christmas Bonus was first paid in 1972 as a result of The Pensioners and Family Income Supplement Payments Act 1972 and was introduced as a means of providing additional financial support to customers in receipt of a pension or qualifying benefit.

Both Pensioners and working age customers in receipt of certain benefits receive the tax-free £10 Christmas Bonus and payments are usually automatically generated based on receipt of a qualifying benefit.

For the 2017/2018 qualifying period (latest data available) 15,922000.00 (fifteen million, nine hundred and twenty two thousand) DWP customers received the Christmas Bonus.

DWP does not retain information relating to the number of customers who contacted the Department to report non-payment of the Christmas Bonus as it does not have a business requirement to do so. Therefore, this information is only available at disproportionate cost to The Department for Work & Pensions.

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