Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the sum of money was resulting from a) deductions and b) sanctions applied to Universal Credit claims in Truro and Falmouth constituency in the most recent 12 months for which data is available.

a) The Deductions policy in Universal Credit (UC) is to support customers by providing a repayment method for arrears of essential services, such as, housing, electricity, and gas and enable customers with a child maintenance liability meet their obligation to make child maintenance payments. The deductions policy also enables obligations, such as, paying Court Fines and Council Tax arrears to be enforced when other repayment methods have failed, or are not cost effective, and ensures that benefit debt is recovered in a cost-effective manner.

From April 2025 the Government introduced the Fair Repayment Rate which reduced the level of deduction taken from Universal Credit from 25% to 15%, and meant that 1.2m households retained on average £420 per year enabling these UC households to have more of their award to meet their day-to-day needs.

Universal Credit deductions statistics are published quarterly with the latest figures available in table 6, row 491 in Universal Credit deductions statistics, September 2024 to August 2025, supplementary data tables, at Universal Credit statistics, 29 April 2013 to 9 October 2025 - GOV.UK

b) The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.