Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of the Work and Pensions Select Committee’s survey into people’s experiences of the benefits system during the covid-19 outbreak.

Ministers have met with the Committee and provided their evidence about the welfare system and the Department’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Department will continue to work constructively with the Committee, including the responses it received in response to their claimant survey. The Department’s Ministers meet regularly with stakeholders to listen and hear about their experiences first hand.

Since mid-March, the Department has received 2.9 million individual declarations for Universal Credit claims. Despite that surge, the system is standing up to the challenge and demonstrating that resilience is part of its design, whilst maintaining levels of payment timeliness.

And, for those claimants who felt that they could not wait for their first routine payment, New Claim Advances are available online and by telephone, with the majority receiving money within 72 hours.