Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment his Department has made of the potential effect of the application of the Minimum Income Floor or In-work Conditionality under universal credit on the ability of workers to sustain careers in the creative industries; and what steps he is taking to ensure that the roll-out of universal credit does not undermine the creative industries.

The objective of the Minimum Income Floor is to incentivise work and protect the taxpayer against fraud or non-profitable forms of self-employment. Claimants who have the Minimum Income Floor applied, are not required to look or be available for paid employment.

Claimants who have started a new business in the last 12 months will qualify for a one year start-up period during which the Minimum Income Floor will not be applied to their claim. This is intended to provide self-employed claimants with the room to grow and establish their business during the start-up period.

As Universal Credit rolls out in a careful and controlled way, we will continue our Test and Learn approach to drive continuous improvement of the service ensuring it is built on experience and evidence.

Under Universal Credit we will be supporting people in low paid employment to get on in-work. We are committed to testing a variety of approaches to help people to earn more and will use the analysis from these trials to understand the impacts on all industries including the creative industries.