Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what plans her Department has to include an estimate of the (a) number and (b) expected number of people falling out of the social security system and during the universal credit managed migration pilot when it reports to Parliament on that pilot.

We do not intend to stop anyone’s benefit during the pilot. In the pilot phase, our intention is to learn how to effectively assist people onto Universal Credit and to develop processes to deliver that help. This is particularly important for vulnerable and hard-to-reach claimants, who the Department will help to move across to the new system. We are piloting this approach precisely to learn how we can contact and support people to move to Universal Credit without ending their legacy entitlement.

Through the pilot process we will work to understand the reasons for unsuccessful applications. However, there will be safeguards in place to protect those who might otherwise fail to make a successful claim.

We will report on our findings from the pilot before bringing forward legislation to extend this process.