Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that consent procedures enable charities and support organisations to give practical support to Universal Credit claimants.

Given Universal Credit is delivered on a different platform to legacy benefits, and it replaces six major benefits, the approach taken to consent needs to be different. The amount of personal data available on Universal Credit is far greater than the individual legacy systems, meaning that any data breach has far reaching consequences for claimants. We therefore need to balance consent against this risk.

We have agreed to explore options for improving the process of consent in collaboration with the Committee in order to consider how current practices could be enhanced, and we will publish a report on our joint conclusions.