Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many universal credit claimants have successfully disputed the Real Time Information on which their awards have been based in the most recent 12 months for which data are available.

The Department has been working closely with HMRC since Universal Credit went live in 2013 to support and inform employers who report earnings to emphasise the importance of timely reporting via the Real Time Information (RTI) system.

HMRC have guidance to reiterate to employers the importance of reporting accurate dates and the impact on payment cycles; the Financial Secretary to the Treasury is also working closely with HMRC and employers to do this.

Between February 2019 to January 2020 the Department completed over 23 million Universal Credit earnings calculations using RTI data. Of these, 107,463 were disputed and 20,418 were upheld.