Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is taking to ensure (a) people in farming and (b) other people who are unable to demonstrate consistent monthly income figures are able to apply for Universal Credit.

Universal Credit is available to eligible people who are out of work or on a low income. This includes people who are self-employed.

We recognise that some self-employed customers, including those in the farming industry, are likely to report large monthly fluctuations in their earnings. Steps have been taken to account for this, such as allowing self-employed losses to be carried forward into future assessment periods.

Wherever possible, employed earnings are received through the Real Time Information (RTI) system used by employers to report Pay As You Earn (PAYE) data to His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC). RTI enables a customer’s Universal Credit award to be automatically adjusted to reflect their fluctuating earnings, which eases the reporting burden on customers.

If earnings are not reported through RTI for any reason, the customer will need to self-report their earnings and provide evidence of these.

We are committed to reviewing Universal Credit to make sure it is doing the job we want it to, to make work pay and tackle poverty. The review will include consideration of the support in Universal Credit for customers with fluctuating incomes.