Universal Credit: Translation Services
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 17 October 2025 to Question 83176 on Universal Credit, how many and what proportion of claims were made by people with the support of a paid interpreter; and what was the the total cost of (a) translation and (b) interpretation for supporting claimants in each of the last ten years.
Answered by Sir Stephen Timms
The Department does not retain data on how many and what proportion of Universal Credit claims were made by people requiring the support of paid interpretation services. The breakdown of costs for translation and interpretation across all benefits including Universal Credit, from 2019/2020 to present is shown below. This data is not available prior to 2019.
| Translation Costs (including Pension Credit Customers) | Interpretation Costs |
2019/20 | £ 472,539 | £ 2,219,613 |
2020/21 | £ 398,270 | £ 3,537,872 |
2021/22 | £ 518,927 | £ 6,823,140 |
2022/23 | £ 641,747 | £ 5,668,822 |
2023/24 | £ 677,614 | £ 6,195,053 |
2024/25 | £ 919,390 | £ 8,676,773 |
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