Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 22 September 2022 to Question 49154, how many Universal Credit claimants who received a nil award also did not qualify for the cost of living payment.

Universal Credit households can receive a nil award for various reasons. The majority of nil awards are due to household earnings. Other reasons that can cause or contribute to a nil award include capital, other income, other benefits, sanctions and fraud penalties.

498,700 households containing 594,400 UC claimants had a nil Universal Credit award in the qualifying assessment period and therefore were not eligible for the cost-of-living payment.

Notes:

1. Figures have been rounded to the nearest hundred.

2. Great Britain level figures have been provided.

3. Nil awards have been defined as households that received a £0 Universal Credit payment and had no deductions for advance repayments, third party debts or government debts and had no money paid directly to their landlord by Universal Credit.

4. Figures are provisional and are subject to retrospective change as later data becomes available.

5. The methodology used is different to those used to derive the Official Statistics Household series and therefore, figures may not be comparable.

6. The methodology and data source may be slightly different to those used to derive entitlement to the Cost-of-Living Payment.