Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many of applications for (a) universal credit and (b) job seekers allowance were rejected on the Habitual Residency Test in each of the last five years.

Long-standing policy has always been eligibility for income-related (means-tested) social security benefits depends on a person’s immigration status in the UK. Claimants must be exercising a legal right to reside and be habitually resident before they are eligible to claim income related benefit. This is assessed through the Habitual Residence Test (HRT), which has been in place since 1994.

Information on the number of JSA claims which failed the Habitual Residence Test are available in “Analysis of Migrants’ Access to Income-Related Benefits”

Information on Universal Credit contracts which have a recorded failed Habitual Residence Test are as follows: 2016/2017 – 800 failed claims, 2017/2018 – 7,600 failed claims and 2018/2019 – 30,700 failed claims, this reflects the increasing caseload on UC since it’s rollout. UC data supplied is derived from unpublished management information, which was collected for internal Departmental use only and has not been quality assured to National Statistics or Official Statistics publication standard. The data should therefore be treated with caution. UC cases may be closed for other reasons (for example, “ineligible”) but may have failed the HRT – these are not captured in the estimates above.

Information for JSA claims from 2017/18 is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost. No data was recorded on UC data for HRTs prior to 2016/17