Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment her Department has made of the potential challenges experienced by people with learning difficulties as part of the managed migration to universal credit process; and what steps her Department is taking to mitigate those challenges.

We are committed to fully complying with the Public Sector Equality Duty as we proceed with managed migration and will be regularly reviewing and updating our equality analysis as we progress through the discovery phase and iterate our approach.

We are currently reviewing our explicit consent process to make it easier for those who need the support but do not have or need an appointee to have someone to act on their behalf.

A variety of support is in place for those issued with migration notices, including for individuals with health conditions and disabilities. As we progress through the discovery phase, we are keen to understand what additional support is required for people to make their claim to UC.

Our current support consists of:

• A dedicated phoneline
• Further guidance on Gov.uk
• Specially trained staff in JCP’s and service centres who can identify local tailored support
• Support through Help to Claim