Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether her Department informs people who have been overpaid universal credit that they can apply for a formal waiver.

From August 2020 to July 2021, a total of *89,000 Universal Credit Official Error Overpayments in excess of £1,000 were recorded on Debt Manager. There are currently approximately 6 million Universal Credit claimants.

The Department is unable to provide information on how many waiver requests for Universal Credit Official Error overpayments exceeding £1,000 were made (and were successful) in the last 12 months, as to do so would incur disproportionate costs.

When the Department informs claimants of a benefit overpayment (either by letter, or via the journal in Universal Credit), they are advised to contact the Department’s Debt Management Team to discuss repayment. During this discussion, if a claimant expresses concern about repayment, Debt Management staff will inform them that they can request that a waiver be considered.

It should be noted that a waiver can only be granted where the recovery of the overpayment is causing substantial medical and/or financial hardship, and where clear evidence of this can be provided.

DWP pays welfare benefits to around 23 million people and is committed to ensuring that the right people are paid the right amount of Universal Credit. The vast majority of benefit expenditure (more than £200bn across all benefits) was paid correctly in the last financial year, with front line staff working hard to prevent overpayments from occurring.

*Please note that this data is taken from operational data systems, and is not intended for publication. Therefore, the data itself is not quality assured to the standard of published Official Statistics and National Statistics.