The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has started telling 500 disabled people on unemployment benefits they must switch to Universal Credit, just days after a Tory minister assured MPs that no claimants would face such a move until September.
The DWP has previously announced that it will start rolling out Universal Credit for remaining Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and ESA with Housing Benefit claimants in September.
This date was confirmed by Labor Minister Jo Churchill (in the picture) last month, when she told deputies in a written statement that this extension would only start in September.
Churchill, who is not standing for re-election as an MP, wrote on 21 May: “Our current planning assumption is that we will start informing this group in September 2024 with the aim of notifying everyone to take this step by December 2025.”
But less than two weeks later, on June 3, the DWP began sending out so-called “migration notices” to around 500 ESA claimants in Wolverhampton and East Suffolk.
This was reported by the charitable social network Rightsnet.
In an email to “stakeholders”, the DWP said: “The aim of this activity is to gather more knowledge to help us plan for the migration of these cohorts in a timely fashion, with one of the key insights we want to understand is what proportion of households will need support through extended support.”
The DWP asked social rights advisers not to share this “operational update” publicly as it “wanted to manage any anxiety from people in ESA and did not want to give people in ESA the wrong impression that we have moved on from our publicly stated plan to start migrating people from September”.
Disability campaigner Gail Ward, a long-time member of local groups Disabled People Against Cuts and the Black Triangle Campaign and founder of the Hand2MouthProject, which helps and educates those claiming Universal Credit about how the system works, said Churchill’s written statement was “absolutely”. misleading”.
She added: “I am concerned about the applicants because they are being used as guinea pigs as usual.”
Ward said Churchill also misled MPs by telling them the DWP had “developed and tested a new ‘extended support’ pathway for income and employment support and support for customers who need extra help”, when the email suggested that it wasn’t finished and still is. is tested.
She said: “The DWP appears to be in shambles and in need of reform as staff are often as unsure of the rules as claimants.
“Claimants tell me when they ring [DWP] tells them one thing, and when the claimant later challenges it, another customer service agent tells them something else.”
Disability News Service (DNS) asked Churchill to explain why the DWP misled MPs about the department’s migration plans and when it decided to send the June migration notices.
She didn’t respond by 11am today (Thursday).
The DWP could not comment in detail because of the rules civil servants must follow once a general election has been called.
But it said: “We are regularly carrying out small training activities to develop our approach ahead of plans to move a large number of older customers later this year.
“This activity does not alter or change any previous statements on universal credit migration.”
The DWP faced two coroners’ reports and concerns raised by its own staff that it had failed to make the working-age benefits system safe for claimants in vulnerable situations.
Only last week the DNS reported that the DWP and the Cabinet Office had been unable to find a report outlining how the DWP supports “vulnerable” people who rely on Universal Credit.
Note from the editor:
Please consider making a voluntary financial contribution to support the work of DNS and enable it to continue producing independent, carefully researched news articles that focus on the lives and rights of disabled people and their user-driven organisations.
Don’t donate if you can’t afford it, and remember that DNS is not a charity. It is run and owned by disabled journalist John Pring and has been around since its launch in April 2009.
Thanks for all you can do to support the work of DNS…