Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department has taken to offer more hours to employees of her Department who are in receipt of universal credit; and how many employees of her Department in receipt of universal credit have secured such extra hours in order to comply with conditionality requirements.

DWP employees claiming Universal Credit have no obligation to inform DWP they are on any benefit and DWP policy is clear that employees claiming benefits will not be treated more or less favourably than other staff.

All requests for an increase in working hours are considered and agreed at a local level. Such requests will be handled in the same way regardless of the fact the employee is a Universal Credit claimant. Similarly, we keep no separate data as to whether requests for increase in hours are from employees on benefits or not. The fact that employees claim benefits has no bearing on the business decisions of DWP at organisational or individual level.

Claimants who are in work with earnings above the Administrative Earnings Threshold are not currently expected to undertake any mandatory activity. Therefore there is currently no conditionality requirement.