Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many cases her Department has passed to the Jointly Managed Engagement Team for HMRC to clarify earnings with employers where there has been a dispute reported through RTI in each month since 2016.

The referrals to the Jointly Managed Engagement Team (JMET) were not broken down into disputes relating specifically to earnings between April 2016 and March 2018.

However, based on the 9811 dispute referrals to the JMET during that period, HMRC estimates that 1765 sought to clarify earnings submitted through Real Time Information (RTI).

Between April and December 2018, there were 7720 referrals to JMET to clarify earnings submitted through RTI. The below table shows this by monthly breakdown.

The national roll-out of Universal Credit saw accelerated increase from April-November 2018. As of March 2018, there were 817,912 people on Universal Credit. This almost doubled by November 2018, in which there was 1,426,540 people on Universal Credit.