Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many universal credit deductions for the over-payment of universal credit were made in (a) March and (b) and April 2020.

The data for deductions in March and April 2020 is not yet available.

From 3rd April 2020, deductions from Universal Credit for some government debt, such as Tax Credits, benefit overpayments and Social Fund Loans were suspended initially for 3 months with a review. This was done to ease the financial pressure of debt recovery on benefit claimants and to also allow Debt Management staff to be re-deployed to focus on the unprecedented volume of new claims received during the covid-19 outbreak.