DWP 'exploring' publishing details of people who claim benefits

The Department for Work and Pensions may FINALLY publish nationalities of benefit claimants after Reform UK's push to tackle fraudsters. The DWP is "exploring" publishing a nationality breakdown of benefits claimants.

Reform's Great Yarmouth MP Rupert Lowe said that his "continued hounding" of the Labour Party government for "transparency and honesty" looks to have made a positive breakthrough after he received a ministerial response today.

Writing on social media, Lowe said he had been told: "The department is exploring the feasibility of developing suitable official statistics related to the immigration status of non-UK/Irish Universal Credit customers." He added: "I've been pushing the DWP to provide a nationality breakdown of those claiming benefits. It seems like they are considering it.

READ MORE 29 parts of England set for snow on Tuesday and Wednesday according to Met Office

"This is positive, but let's see what happens. I will continue to hound the Government for more transparency and more honesty. We are making progress. The British people deserve to know the truth." There is a delay in releasing the majority of DWP Benefits Statistics on Stat-Xplore, originally scheduled for Tuesday 12 November 2024.

In the year to February 2023 the number of people receiving the State Pension rose by 140,000 to 12.6 million and Employment and Support Allowance fell by 5.6% to 1.6 million claimants, while Income Support fell by 19.7% to 150,000 claimants and Jobseeker’s Allowance fell by 15.4% to 93,000 claimants.

In the year to May 2023 Housing Benefit fell by 7.1% to 2.4 million claimants. Universal Credit has been replacing some older-style Working Age benefits. The latest Universal Credit Official statistics show there were 6.1 million Universal Credit claimants at July 2023

Benefit Combination statistics show 22.6 million people claimed some combination of DWP benefits in February 2023 (of the 17 benefits included in these statistics). Of these 12.8 million were of State Pension Age (including those in receipt of their State Pension).