Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many Universal Credit deductions for (a) households and (b) households with children in Enfield North constituency there were from (i) March 2022 to February 2023, (ii) March 2021 to February 2022 and (iii) March 2020 to February 2021.

The primary aim of the Universal Credit deductions policy is to protect vulnerable claimants by providing a last resort repayment method for arrears of essential services. In recent years, the standard UC deduction cap has been reduced twice – from 40% to 30% of the Standard Allowance in October 2019, and down to 25% in April 2021.

From April 2020 to July 2020, a temporary freeze on government and third party deductions was introduced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The requested information is provided in the separate spreadsheet.