Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many universal credit claimants claimed support for childcare costs in the most recent period for which figures are available.

The information you have requested is not currently available. The Department published its strategy for releasing official statistics on Universal Credit (UC) in September 2013. As outlined in the strategy, officials are currently quality assuring data for UC therefore it is not yet possible to give a definitive list of what statistics will be provided in the future. These statistics however will be published in accordance with the relevant protocols in the Code of Practice for official statistics.

The latest official experimental statistics on UC and the Department’s release strategy can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/universal-credit-statistics.