Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many universal credit claimants have been deemed eligible for the cost of living payments; and what proportion of those people received that payment by (a) 31 July, (b) 31 August and (c) 30 September 2022.

7.2 million cost-of-living payments have been paid out to low-income families to date.

The following special points should be noted:

Statistics on Universal Credit households and award amounts were released in August 2022 covering claims with assessment periods spanning 12th May 2022. Since the qualifying period for the cost-of-living payments stretches from 26th April 2022 to 25th May 2022, if we were to provide data for all those receiving the payments it would pre-empt the next release of the statistics.

The next release will be published on 15^th November 2022 and will include households with assessment periods spanning the remainder of the qualifying period for the cost-of-living payments.