Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 24 June 2019 to Question 264329, of the 749,000 claimants with deductions from universal credit for non-universal credit debts, if she will provide a breakdown of the tax credit overpayments being repaid by the year in which those overpayments first originated.

The table below shows the amount of Tax Credit debt broken down by year. *

Universal Credit is expected to lead to savings across welfare as we are able to adjust benefit entitlement in line with changing circumstances in real time. Internal and external data matches are increasingly helping inform benefit payments and alerting staff to check for any undeclared changes in people’s circumstances.

When recovering benefit overpayments, the Department ensures that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect claimants from any undue financial hardship.

*The data provided in this response has been sourced from internal management information and was not intended for public release. It should therefore not be compared to any other, similar data subsequently released by the Department.