Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the number of claimants of employment support allowance that will be classified as vulnerable as a result of the managed migration to universal credit.

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.

This will also be true of the migration process which will begin in 2019, with small-scale testing of up to 10,000 claimants to ensure our process works well before the volume of migration increases. We are committed to ensuring that all claimants and particularly the most vulnerable are fully supported through the migration process.

Many claimants will be better off on Universal Credit, as currently over £2.4bn of legacy benefits remains unclaimed. Universal Credit will ensure (through the managed migration regulations which will be subject to parliamentary scrutiny later this autumn) that 700,000 more households, including those who are vulnerable, will receive the money they are entitled to.

More severely disabled people will also receive higher payments under Universal Credit, with around 1 million disabled households gaining on average about £110 more per month. Transitional protection payments will also ensure that no-one loses out at the point of transition to Universal Credit under the managed migration process.