The Work and Pensions Committee is today launching a new inquiry
into what the Government calls “natural migration”: the process
by which people claiming existing benefits move onto Universal
Credit if they have a change in their circumstances.
Universal Credit has now been rolled out to every Jobcentre in
the country. This means that if people who are already claiming
benefits under the old system have a change in their
circumstances (for example, if they form part of a new couple, or
separate from an existing partner), they can’t make a new claim
for the old benefits. Instead, they have to make a whole new
claim for Universal Credit.
The Government calls this “natural migration” to Universal
Credit. People who transfer onto Universal Credit in this way
aren’t eligible for any transitional protection payments and so
may see a change in their income from benefits. For many people,
this may be the first time that they discover that their income
will change under Universal Credit.
The Committee has heard concerns that:
- the Government hasn’t given clear and comprehensive information
about the “triggers” for “natural migration”
- the absence of transitional protection means people might have
to cope suddenly with a – potentially unexpected - drop in
income.
This is the latest stage in the Committee’s ongoing work on
Universal Credit – which has already resulted in the Government
making significant changes to the system.
In its November report on so-called “managed migration” – the
process of wholesale moving existing benefit claimants onto
Universal Credit even if their circumstances haven’t changed
- the Committee called on the Government to publish an
assessment of the impact of a sudden loss of income due to
natural migration on different claimant groups, and then to look
again at whether the triggers for natural migration are
appropriate. In its official response to that report, published
today alongside this new inquiry launch, the Government has
refused to do that.
The Chair has written back to the Secretary of State with a
series of questions about the Government’s response - that
correspondence is also published today. The Committee is
disappointed and concerned by the Government’s failure to engage
with its report and reasoning behind key recommendations, and
intends to return to several of them including, now, the
“triggers” for natural migration. The Department declined, again,
to set tests that it will meet before managed migration begins.
“Given that we, the NAO and SSAC all made this recommendation,
this continued resistance is very disappointing.”
The Government’s response also does not address the central issue
of who takes the risk in the transition to Universal Credit, with
the Committee arguing repeatedly that it should be Government,
making the huge reform, who assume the risk, not existing benefit
claimants who include the most vulnerable people in our society.
The Government says it’s simply impossible for it to move people
over without requiring them to make a new claim, but “did not
offer—and has not offered during our inquiry—any evidence”
why.
DWP also appears strangely reluctant to acknowledge the key
recommendation it did accept. The Committee had said DWP should not ask
MPs to vote on new UC rules until it had listened to
expert views on them. And that is what happened: rather than a
vote before Christmas as the Government had originally planned,
revised rules were published last week. The Chair was therefore
very “surprised to read that the Government ‘does not accept this
recommendation’, given that by the time the response arrived the
Government had not only accepted the recommendation but also
implemented it.”
Send us your views on “natural migration”
The Committee would like to hear your views on the following
questions, to inform this next phase of our work on Universal
Credit.
You can respond as an individual, a group or an
organisation. You don’t need to answer all of the
questions.
Please send us your views by 18 February 2019.
- Which groups
of people stand to lose out most when they transfer to Universal
Credit? What should the Government be doing to support those
groups?
- What does
the lack of a comprehensive list of “triggers” that can transfer
people to Universal Credit mean in practice for claimants and the
groups who support them? Should the Government produce a full
list?
- Are the
existing “triggers” for natural migration appropriate? If not,
how should they be changed?
- Has the
Department for Work and Pensions done enough to help people to
understand what changes in their circumstances might cause them
to have to transfer to Universal Credit, and what that might mean
for them? What more could it do?
