Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, following the Secretary of State for Work and Pension’s speech Universal Credit: personal welfare on 11 January, how the process of claiming Universal Credit and nominating a bank account will be changed so as to ensure payment is received by the main carer.

The initial work to improve the claimant messaging on the service, to encourage claimants in joint claims to utilise the bank account of the main carer when receiving their Universal Credit payment, will be completed this year. We expect this to increase the proportion of Universal Credit claims where payment is made to the main carer. Any further work will be considered following an understanding of the impact the change to messaging has had.