Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of the universal credit minimum income floor on self-employed creative workers whose incomes are unpredictable.

The Minimum Income Floor is designed to address flaws in the current system which allow some self-employed claimants to receive full State support while declaring low or zero earnings. It also prevents people from under-declaring earnings. This situation is unsustainable and unfair on the taxpayer.

The Minimum Income Floor is expected to encourage those reporting very low self-employed income to increase their earnings. Some people will respond to this by increasing their earnings from self-employment, others will look for other employment to increase their income and it is applied equally across all sectors of self - employment.

In addition, the Government recognises the need for claimants who are setting up a business to be given time to establish themselves and develop their business and customer base. That is why claimants who are gainfully self-employed and within one year of starting out in self-employment will be eligible for a ‘start-up period’, during which the Minimum Income Floor will not be applied for up to 12 months.

We will continue to monitor and evaluate the impact of self-employment alongside the roll out of Universal Credit.