Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people had their claim rejected for (a) Universal Credit, (b) the State Pension and (c) other public funds due to having a no recourse to public funds condition in each year since 2020.

Persons subject to immigration control have no recourse to public funds and so cannot access taxpayer-funded benefits such as Universal Credit. Nationals of countries other than the UK and Ireland may have no recourse to public funds because either their immigration status prohibits this or they do not have an immigration status.

The table below gives the number of individuals who have been assessed as ineligible for public funds benefit due to being a ‘Person Subject to Immigration Control’, i.e. having No Recourse to Public Funds from April 2022 onwards (data is not held prior to this period). An individual can be a ‘Person Subject to Immigration control’ due to the conditions of their immigration status or because they have no immigration status.

Source: DWP internal analysis of UC Dataworks tables, Rounded to the nearest 1,000 decisions.

Equivalent information for non-Universal Credit benefits is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.

The new State Pension is based on National Insurance contributions and payments are not classified as public funds for immigration purposes. Entitlement for any payments of the new State Pension is usually dependent on the individual having a minimum of ten qualifying years of National Insurance when they reach State Pension age.