PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
(5 June 2026)

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what is the annual cost of paying legacy benefits such as working tax credits and earlier iterations of Universal Credit to people in paid employment.

Asked by:
Ben Goldsborough (Labour)

Precursors to Universal Credit (UC) such as Working Tax Credits (WTC) have now migrated to UC, therefore legacy payments are no longer applicable. As a result, all associated costs are captured within UC payments.

For other working age benefits where claimants will not migrate to UC, data availability is more limited. There are currently no standard published outputs covering costs for claimants in employment within these benefits.

Housing Benefit (HB) statistics include information on the number of claimants by employment status, which is available via Stat‑Xplore. However, the associated expenditure for these specific cases is not published.

Answered by:
()