Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the implications are for her policies of the findings of the National Audit Office report entitled Rolling out Universal Credit, published on 15 June 2018.

The NAO report was completed before the implementation of a range of recent policy changes which address many of the concerns raised in the report.

On 21 June the Secretary of State, Esther McVey, made an Oral Statement to the House about Universal Credit and recent welfare changes. Part of her statement referred to the recently published NAO Report. The recently published Universal Credit Business Case summary shows that UC is projected to help 200,000 people into work, adding £8 billion per annum to the economy when it is fully rolled-out. These are estimates based on analysis that has been signed off by the Treasury.

The Oral Statement can be accessed at: https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2018-06-21/debates/E234119F-DC84-4CB4-A814-69CC6A1441E8/UniversalCreditAndWelfareChanges

The Government will officially respond after the Public Accounts Committee hearing on 9 July.