Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many universal credit claims were subject to deductions in the most recent month for which data are available, broken down by ethnicity; how much on average was deducted for each minority ethnic group; what was the total sum of deductions for each minority ethnic group; and what proportion of each of those sums was deducted to repay advance payments.

The information requested by ethnic group is not available. As the ethnicity of Universal Credit (UC) claimants is collected through voluntary self-declaration and the completion rate has been and still is deficient, we have determined that this does not actually reflect the ethnicity breakdown of those on UC. Once 70% of those on UC have provided their ethnicity information (excluding those who prefer not to say) the Department will then hold sufficient information to consider publishing the ethnicity breakdown of those on UC.