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 cost to the public purse of retaining the £20 uplift to the standard allowance of universal credit.

We expect this would cost around £6bn per year. The cost of funding one year of the uplift is the equivalent of adding 1p on the basic rate of income tax in addition to a 3p increase in fuel duty.