Social Security Benefits: Public Sector

(asked on 14th July 2017) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an estimate of the number of benefit claimants subject to the household benefit cap who are public sector workers subject to the one per cent pay cap.


Answered by
Caroline Dinenage Portrait
Caroline Dinenage
This question was answered on 19th July 2017

We do not hold any data on the number of public sector workers subject to the benefit cap. Households are exempt if entitled to Working Tax Credit, (essentially, lone parents working 16 hours per week and couples working 24 hours per week between them where one partner works at least 16 hours per week) or in Universal Credit if earning £520 per month.

Households can be exempt from the cap if they are claiming WTC and the most recent official statistics show that

  • 134,000 households in Great Britain have been capped since April 2013
  • 68,000 households are no longer subject to cap and 29,000 of these (43%) are exempt due to working tax credit indicating they have found work.
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