Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to page 78 of the Red Book and page 11 of the policy costings for Budget 2018, what the schedule is for the start and end of (a) the pilot for the managed migration of people claiming legacy claimants to universal credit and (b) the managed migration as a whole.

We have carefully considered the plan for migrating claimants to Universal Credit from their existing legacy benefits; reflecting on feedback from stakeholders, we have extended the testing period and moved back the start date to ensure we have the time necessary to get this right.

Managed migration will commence in July 2019 during which up to 10,000 claimants will be migrated as part of the testing phase. This gradual and steady approach will allow us to ensure that the process works for everyone. We expect the test phase to run for a year.

We will begin to migrate claimants at scale later in 2020, completing the process in December 2023.