Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate he has made of the number of universal credit claimants affected by the benefit cap who will face over payment recovery action because of a delay in applying the cap to their initial monthly payments.

The department does not readily hold the data requested.

As Universal Credit simplifies the benefits system, all of the necessary information to decide whether or not to apply the benefit cap is held in one place. Therefore, the benefit cap calculation is not in practice being backdated, rather it is encompassed in the overall Universal Credit assessment.