Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the Johnson & Others v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Court of Appeal decision 22 June 2020, what steps her Department is taking to recompense universal credit claimants who experienced fluctuations of their income due to the method of calculating earned income prior to the changes brought into effect on 16 November 2020.

The legislation and arrangements we have put in place provide a remedy to satisfy the Court of Appeal’s Judgment and means that for future cases affected by this issue, monthly earnings will be reallocated to another assessment period, which means that only one set of earnings will be taken into account rather than two, and certain claimants will be able to benefit from any applicable work allowance.

The Court of Appeal’s judgment did not require the Department to apply the new arrangements retrospectively.