Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what work they are doing to ascertain the needs of vulnerable claimants who will be moving from Employment Support Allowance to Universal Credit; and what additional safeguards they will introduce to protect claimants who transfer from Employment Support Allowance to Universal Credit.

The Department is fully committed to supporting vulnerable claimants, including those on ESA during the roll out of Universal Credit.

To support this, we have completed an Equality Analysis before restarting managed migration to ensure we are fully compliant with the Public Sector Equality Duty. During the discovery phase we will work with small numbers of existing benefit claimants from different places across the country to identify what is needed to prompt and help people to make a claim to Universal Credit.

There will be a range of support available to individuals, including a dedicated DWP telephone line and signposting to independent support through the Help to Claim service.