Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of claims for universal credit that have been processed by her Department since 29 March 2020 have resulted in people not qualifying for a payment.
The Department has been working to ensure we get support as quickly as possible to those individuals and households most financially affected by the coronavirus pandemic. It has been a longstanding principle of Universal Credit that an assessment of earnings, other income and capital is needed to establish eligibility to target support to those most in need. There may be several reasons why someone is not eligible to receive Universal Credit, will have received a nil award or withdrew their claim. Among other reasons, this includes:
Between March 30th and April 19th there were 767,000 declarations made to Universal Credit, all of which are processed. Of these:
The proportion of new claims which generated a Universal Credit payment therefore actually rose in the first month of the emergency, when compared to the January and February figures.
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