Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of introducing a maximum duration for payment of debt through deductions to social security before the debt is written off.

The Secretary of State has an obligation to protect public funds and to ensure that, wherever possible, benefit overpayments are recovered. However, we recognise the importance of safeguarding the welfare of claimants who have incurred benefit debt and our over-arching policy is that all repayment plans should be affordable and sustainable.

Regulations protect claimants from excessive deductions, which could lead to financial difficulty and our deductions follow a strict priority order, which ensure claimants avoid the consequences of not paying third party debts whilst also ensuring social obligations are met. Universal Credit is subject to a deduction cap of 25% of the standard allowance. We encourage anyone unable to afford the proposed rate of repayment to contact Debt Management so that we can consider temporarily lowering the rate.

We remain committed to Her Majesty’s Treasury’s Beathing Space policy, which provides those with problem debt the right to legal protections from creditor action for a period of 60 days to enable them to receive debt advice and enter into an appropriate debt solution.

Other than recovery by Civil Action in the courts, there are no time limits for recovery of a benefit debt. While the policy is to consider abandoning some debts based on the cost effectiveness of pursuing recovery, the legal right to recover does not expire in England and Wales, and DWP retains the right to recover the debt where it is cost effective to do so.