Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of universal credit payments were subject to a deduction, excluding sanctions, in the latest month for which data is available.

Of all eligible claims to Universal Credit Full Service due a payment in Feb 2019, 57 per cent (840,000 claims) had a deduction.

Notes

Deductions include advance repayments and all other deductions, but exclude sanctions and fraud penalties which are reductions of benefit rather than deductions.

Claim numbers may not match official statistics caseloads due to small methodological differences.

Claim numbers are rounded to the nearest 1,000.