Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate his Department has made of the number and proportion of Tax Credit claimants that have received migration notices under Move to Universal Credit and who have had to repay Tax Credit debt in (a) the UK, (b) Merseyside and (c) Wirral.

As of November 2023,100 Tax Credit claims, in Merseyside, and less than 5 Tax Credit claims, in the Wirral that have migrated to Universal Credit (UC) have had a deduction for a non-fraud Tax Credit debt from their UC award.

UC claims in Northern Ireland are administered by the Department for Communities.

Proportions of the Tax Credit caseload cannot be provided as Tax Credit claims are administered by HMRC. HMRC publish statistics on the number of families benefiting from Child Tax Credit (CTC) and/or Working Tax Credit (WTC) in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Latest publication can be found here:

Commentary - Child and Working Tax Credits statistics: Provisional awards - April 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Notes:

1. Numbers have been rounded to the nearest 10.

2. The figures are of distinct Universal Credit households that have migrated from Child Tax Credits and/or Working Tax Credits that also had a deduction taken from their UC entitlement to repay a non-fraud Tax Credit debt. Any household with deductions in more than one assessment period will only be counted once.

3. "Merseyside" has been interpreted as the sum of the Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St. Helens & Wirral local authority areas.

4. Data has been provided for deductions taken up to November 2023, in line with the latest available UC Household Statistics.

5. Figures are provisional and are subject to retrospective change as later data becomes available.