Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what criteria they are using to select the first 500 universal credit claimants to be migrated other than geographical area.

The purpose of the Discovery is to work with small numbers of existing benefit claimants from different places across the country to learn how best to smoothly move claimants to Universal Credit. The first 500 claimants span the full range of legacy benefits - including those with a combination of legacy benefits - and are broadly representative of the wider legacy benefit caseloads in Bolton and Medway, respectively.