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 effect on disabled people of the decision to convert the severe disability premium transitional payment into a transitional element.

SDP transitional payments are part of the wider transitional protection framework. It had always been the intention to convert SDP transitional payments in this way as soon as we had developed the capability to do so safely and effectively. The aim is to create fairness between those former SDP recipients who have moved or will move to UC via natural migration and those who will move to UC later under managed migration, as well as to create a single, consistent system of transitional protection.

When the SDP transitional payment is converted to a transitional element, the additional money received by claimants will be the same amount. It will then be subject to change in the same way as transitional protection for those claimants moved to UC under managed migration. This moves these claimants towards the same level of financial entitlement as new UC claimants in the same position.