Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to paragraph 6.2 of the Autumn Statement 2016, what the reasons were for the error which resulted in families with disabled children not being in receipt of their full tax credit entitlement.

To assist claimants, DWP shares information with HMRC to help identify those Child Tax Credits (CTC) claimants entitled to higher rate CTC because of the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) Child award. The clerical process to do this was not working as intended and resulted in a reduced number of clerical referrals from DWP to HMRC.

Referral volumes are now back in line with expectations and there have been no further issues reported. We remain committed to taking all reasonable steps to make the process more robust.

At the Autumn Statement the Government announced HMRC will put this right for claimants affected this year and claimants will receive a lump sum payment to reflect entitlement since 6 April 2016, and an on-going higher award.