(Minister of State for
Employment): Universal Credit is a vital reform. It
overhauls a legacy system which trapped people out of work. As we
move to the next stage, known as managed migration, it is vital
that Universal Credit works for all.
To deliver this, the Government will seek powers for a pilot of
managed migration so that the Department cannot issue any more
migration notices once 10,000 people have been awarded Universal
Credit through this process. This approach provides the
opportunity for the Government to develop the best support for
claimants.
This entails replacing the current regulations laid before the
House, with two separate Statutory Instruments.
The first is a negative Statutory Instrument to provide for the
Severe Disability Premium Gateway. This prevents legacy claimants
who are in receipt of the Severe Disability Premium from moving
naturally to Universal Credit and allows them to continue to
claim legacy benefits until they are moved over as part of the
managed migration process. We committed to bringing this
important extra protection into force on 16 January and this
provision ensures that we will meet that commitment.
A second affirmative Statutory Instrument will contain the
remaining regulations as laid on 5th November 2018. These deliver
our commitment to provide the vital transitional protection for
claimants who are moved by the Department, which is worth over £3
billion for claimants over 10 years. These also provide for
transitional payments to those claimants who were previously in
receipt of Severe Disability Premium and have moved to UC before
the gateway came into force.
In addition, we are including a new provision in this Statutory
Instrument, which will mean that once 10,000 claimants have been
moved onto Universal Credit as part of managed migration, no
further migration notices can be issued. In this way the
Government is legislating for ‘piloting powers’ rather than the
migration of all claimants. This is in line with suggestions from
both the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and the Work
and Pensions Select Committee. The Government will report on our
findings from the pilot before bringing forward legislation to
extend managed migration.
The pilot will begin - as planned - from July 2019 and does not
affect the timeline for delivering Universal Credit, which will
be completed in 2023.
The current legislation provides that, from 1 February new claims
to Universal Credit will support a maximum of two children,
regardless of the date of birth of the children.
The Department has looked again carefully at this issue with
particular focus on the families making a new claim whose
children were all born prior to the implementation of the policy.
We have concluded that including these families would not be
right and therefore they will be entitled to support for any
children born before 6 April 2017, the date that the policy was
introduced. I am bringing forward the necessary legislation to
enable this change.
The policy to provide support for a maximum of two children
ensures that parents in receipt of benefits face the same
financial choices when deciding to grow their family as those
supporting themselves solely through work. Parents who support
themselves solely through work would not usually see their wages
increase simply because of the addition of a new child to their
family. Exceptions are in place to support those who are not able
to make decisions about the number of children in their family.
