Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many Universal Credit claimants have been subject to increased repayments from their weekly benefit following the increase in the Universal Credit standard allowance announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and what proportion of all claimants making repayments that represents.

The data for deductions from March 2020 is not yet available. From 3 April 2020, deductions from Universal Credit for benefit overpayments were suspended for three months. This was done to ease the financial pressure of debt recovery on benefit claimants and to also allow Debt Management staff to be re-deployed to focus on the unprecedented volume of new claims received during the covid-19 outbreak.