Asked by: Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of demand for home visits during the managed migration process; and what resource is available to ensure that this service is accessible to all those that need it.
Answered by Baroness Buscombe
The Department has made no special assumptions for home visits for claimants going through managed migration. Between April 2017 and March 2018 290,000 cleared home visit referrals were made across all the Departments service lines.
To ensure all claimants are supported, the Department has allocated additional funding for the home visiting service. This year we have allocated £1 million of funding for the home visiting service. For 2019/20 the total fund allocated will rise to just under £2 million, and will continue to increase to over £5.5 million per year by 2023/24, reflecting the increase in the total number of claimants of Universal Credit whether through managed migration or from other sources.
Asked by: Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether those currently in receipt of disability related benefits will be regarded as vulnerable claimants for the purpose of the Universal Credit managed migration process.
Answered by Baroness Buscombe
We are committed to fully support all of our claimants through our managed migration processes, which we are working with stakeholders to co-design to ensure that they work for the most vulnerable.
There are many reasons why someone could be vulnerable or in need of additional support, and we work hard to ensure that the support we provide for each claimant is tailored specifically to their circumstances, making individual assessments of the help that each claimant needs.
Asked by: Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that people do not incur extra costs, such as obtaining photographic identification, in order to complete Universal Credit applications.
Answered by Baroness Buscombe
If a claimant does not have photographic identification, staff are able to use a number of alternative identification methods. For example, we can accept separate documentary evidence or we can contact trusted third parties (such as a doctor) in order to verify a claimants identity. These identification methods should not incur costs.
The Department take the security of Universal Credit very seriously, including verifying who our claimants are. We continue to work closely with Government Digital Service to support the success of the Verify online system. The high standards of ID verification achieved by Verify are used on our Universal Credit Full Service today in addition to a face-to-face alternative approach.
Asked by: Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to publish further details of the planned test and trial phase of Universal Credit managed migration; and how managed migration will impact vulnerable claimants.
Answered by Baroness Buscombe
As part of our design process for managed migration we are considering different approaches for how to best migrate claimants onto Universal Credit. We are currently working closely with a large and diverse range of stakeholders to design migration processes that work for everyone and most effectively support those who will need more help. We have said that we will begin managed migration on a small scale in 2019 to pilot our processes and ensure that they are working, adapting them and building on feedback before we begin to take on larger volumes of claimants.
In our published response on 5 November 2018 to the Social Security Advisory Committee’s report, we have committed to publishing an assessment of the managed migration pilot once it is complete, and prior to scaling up managed migration.