Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether her Department has plans to offer financial assistance to local authorities that have increased their bad debt provisions as a result of universal credit.

We appreciate that councils are experiencing budgeting challenges but Universal Credit should not be contributing to them. New Burdens funding has been provided to cover additional costs associated with Universal Credit and the Department will consider reimbursing councils for any additional costs that are not already covered by New Burdens and Universal Support funding. The effect is that Universal Credit should not leave councils out of pocket.