Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate her Department has made of the number of students receiving child tax credits and who will be transferred to universal credit this year in (a) Scotland and (b) the UK; and what assessment she has made of changes in the level of funding for those students.

We have made no such estimate. Claimants currently only migrate from existing benefits to Universal Credit following a relevant change of circumstance that would previously have prompted a new claim to another existing benefit. Therefore it is not possible to estimate with accuracy when such changes may occur.

We will start to move legacy benefit claimants to Universal Credit as part of our Managed Migration process from July 2019. At this point, claimants will receive transitional protection if their overall Universal Credit entitlement would be less than under the old system, provided that their circumstances remain the same.