More than 1.8m claims for Universal Credit since start of coronavirus outbreak, Therese Coffey confirms

There have now been over 1.8 million claims for Universal Credit amid the coronavirus outbreak, Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey has confirmed.

Updating MPs on her department’s efforts, Ms Coffey said: “Since 16 March to the end of April we have received over 1.8 million claims to Universal Credit, over 250,000 claims for Jobseeker’s Allowance and over 20,000 claims for Employment Support Allowance.

“Overall, this is six times the volume that we would typically experience and in one week we had a tenfold increase.

“The rate for UC claims appears to have stabilised at about 20-25,000 per day, which is double that of a standard week pre-Covid-19.”

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Ms Coffey added: “We’ve also issued almost 700,000 advances to claimants who felt that they could not wait for their routine payment and the vast majority of these claimants received money within 72 hours.

“Any claim made under the special rules for terminal illness continues to be fast-tracked, taking an average of six days to process these claim."

The Work and Pensions Secretary also said a new website has been set up to advertise job vacancies.

On the criteria for a claimant to be looking for work being paused for three months, Ms Coffey said: “We do however want claimants to continue to look for work wherever they are able to do so.”

She added: “We’ve created a new website to guide people, it is called jobhelp.dwp.gov.uk and we have 58,200 vacancies advertised.”

Ms Coffey also said that average wait times for calls to DWP helplines are “now below five minutes”.

On Universal Credit, she added: “We will continue to look at issues that arise, like we are assuring that maternity pay is based on the standard pay not furlough pay levels and see what we can do quickly and straightforwardly to fix either unintended consequences or unforeseen issues.

“But it is not my intention to change the fundamental principles or application of Universal Credit.”

Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Jonathan Reynolds challenged the Government to “widen” the social security net to support as many people as possible during the coronavirus pandemic.

He said Universal Credit has been significantly increased but people on legacy benefits – such as Jobseeker’s Allowance and Employment Support Allowance – have not seen a corresponding increase.

Mr Reynolds told the Commons: “Over 100 charities have pointed out that this discriminates against disabled people in particular. When will these benefits be uprated?”

He highlighted calls to temporarily suspend the benefit cap and said the two-child limit should be lifted, stating: “People three years ago could not have been expected to make family choices based on the likelihood of a global pandemic shutting down our economy.

“The Government has suspended sanctions during the crisis but the two-child limit is effectively an 18-year sanction on the third and fourth child in a family and surely it should go too.”

Mr Reynolds also said the five-week wait for the first payment of Universal Credit “should not exist at all” and raised concerns over the impact of UC on maternity allowance, warning it could result in a “low-paid pregnant woman being as much as £4,000 a year worse off”.

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Replying to Labour’s questions, Ms Coffey said it is “far more straightforward and quick” to change Universal Credit and working tax credits in response to Covid-19 compared to legacy benefits.

She told MPs: "Our older systems, the legacy benefit systems it’d take, I understand, quite some time – and I’m talking about several months to get this to change in the process that we have.

"That’s indicative, if I can give an analogy, of when we make changes to benefits, that tends to happen about four or five months before the actual changes come through because that is how long it takes our computer systems to work."

On the benefit cap, Ms Coffey repeated she does not intend to change the fundamental principles or application of the scheme before adding: “I am conscious that for the benefit cap we are still talking outside London about an income of potentially £20,000 over the year being given to benefits’ claimants or £23,000 in London – I’m conscious that that could be something like a £25,000 to £30,000 take-home salary effectively after you’ve taken into account taxation and similar.

“So I do think it’s not necessary to be changing the benefit cap.”

On the five-week wait, Ms Coffey said: “There’s no intention to change that.”

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