Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what was the total value of third-party Universal Credit deductions for (a) court fines, b) Council Tax arrears, c) water charges arrears, (d) gas or electricity charges arrears, (e) mortgage interest arrears and (f) owner-occupier service charge arrears in the 2022-23 financial year.

Data on applications for Universal Credit deductions is not held.

Data for deductions approved is provided in the table below.

Table 1: Number and total amount of third-party debts registered against Universal Credit households between March 2022 and February 2023

Notes:

1. The number of debts has been rounded to the nearest hundred, except for Mortgage Interest and Owner Occupier Service charges, which have been rounded to the nearest 10 due to low numbers. Total debt amounts have been rounded to the nearest £10,000.

2. The registration date for debts is defined as the date the Third Party debt was created.

3. Ongoing consumption deductions for gas, water and electricity are excluded from the total amount of debt. These don’t have a debt amount as they are deductions to pay for ongoing monthly usage. They should only be applied to claims with existing energy / water arrears so households with both arrears and ongoing consumption deductions will be counted in the number of debts registered in the water and energy debt categories.

4. Data for the twelve month period ending February 2023 has been provided, in line with the latest available Universal Credit Household Statistics.

5. Some households may have had more than one debt registered against their Universal Credit claim, so may appear more than once in these statistics.

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