Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what is the total amount deducted from benefit payments to pay for claimants' court imposed fines each year for the ten previous years.

Table 1 provides the total amount deducted from Universal Credit payments to repay a Court Fine debt for each financial year from April 2018 to August 2024.

Notes:

1. Monetary amounts have been rounded to the nearest million.

2. Court fines are classed as a Third Party Deduction. Data for Third Party Deductions is incomplete before April 2018, so we can't provide data for earlier years.

3. Data up to August 2024 has been provided in line with the latest available UC Deductions Statistics.

4. Data for 2018/19 only includes Universal Credit full service claims. Data on Universal Credit live service for 2018/19 is not available. In May 2016 the Universal Credit full service for all claimant types began to rollout nationally and was completed by the end of 2018.

5. Comparison across the different financial years is problematic due to changes in the deductions policy for Universal Credit, which would have affected the number of households having a third party deduction.

6. Figures have been provided for Universal Credit households in Great Britain. Northern Ireland claims are administered by the Department for Communities.

7. Figures are provisional and are subject to retrospective change as later data becomes available.

8. The methodology used is different to those used to derive the Official Statistics Household series and therefore, figures may not be comparable.