Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department plans to take to prevent claimants from experiencing financial hardship as a result of the process of migrating legacy benefits to universal credit in 2019.

We have always said that there will be transitional protection for those claimants with existing premiums whose overall Universal Credit entitlement would be less than under the old system, provided that their circumstances remain the same. We are bringing forward regulations in the Autumn which make provision for this and we have recently announced that we will introduce additional protections for claimants who currently receive the Severe Disability Premium.