Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent estimate her Department has made of the value of unclaimed benefits.

On 29^th October 2020 the Department for Work and Pensions published the report “Income-related benefits: estimates of take-up: financial year 2018 to 2019”. The full report is available online.

For Great Britain, the following estimates are available for 2018/19:

Pension Credit: Up to £1.8 billion of available Pension Credit went unclaimed;

Housing Benefit: Up to £3.4 billion of available Housing Benefit went unclaimed;

Income Support / Income-related Employment and Support Allowance: Up to £1.2 billion of available Income Support / Income-related Employment and Support Allowance went unclaimed.

Estimates are not available for other DWP benefits, including Universal Credit.