Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the number of people with mental health needs that will be unable to move to universal credit because they do not understand the communication about that transition in (a) the North East and (b) the UK.

We do not underestimate the challenge that managed migration represents, we are co-designing the process with stakeholders, making sure it works for everyone and building in safeguards to ensure that vulnerable claimants are fully supported.

We are not migrating everyone at once. Migration will begin with begin with small-scale testing (with up to 10,000 people being migrated in 2019) to ensure that the process works well, before the volume of migration increases.

The Managed Migration regulations, will come before Parliament in the autumn, provide the flexibility and fail-safes to protect vulnerable claimants. We are designing a process to ensure a smooth transition with continuous support.