Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of ensuring that the Universal Credit IT system automatically links to a prior employment and support allowance claim and awards any components contained in that claim.

We have made changes to smooth the transition onto Universal Credit for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) claimants.We have streamlined the process, with more information from ESA assessments now being passed on to Universal Credit. Universal Credit is replacing ESA and will be available for new claims in every Jobcentre by December 2018. We will begin the managed migration of existing ESA claims to Universal Credit in July 2019. Integrating with this system would mean that other important Universal Credit features would need to be delayed in order to implement this.