DWP quietly starts early rollout of universal credit to some ESA claimants, without telling MPs

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has started telling 500 disabled people on out-of-work benefits that they must move onto universal credit, just days after a Conservative minister assured MPs no claimants would face such a move until September.

DWP has previously announced that it would begin its rollout of universal credit to the remaining claimants of employment and support allowance (ESA) and ESA with housing benefit in September.

That date was confirmed by employment minister Jo Churchill (pictured) last month, when she told MPs in a written statement that this extension would not begin until September.

Churchill, who is not standing for re-election as an MP, wrote on 21 May: “Our current planning assumption is that we would begin notifying this group in September 2024, with the aim of notifying everyone to make the move by December 2025.”

But less than two weeks later, on 3 June, DWP began sending out so-called “migration notices” to about 500 ESA claimants in Wolverhampton and East Suffolk.

This was reported by the social welfare charity rightsnet.

DWP said in an email to “stakeholders”: “The purpose of this activity is to gather more learning to inform our planning for migrating these cohorts at scale in due course, with one of the key learnings we are keen to understand being what proportion of households will require support through the enhanced support journey.”

DWP had asked welfare rights advisers not to share this “operational update” publicly because it was “keen to manage any anxiety for people on ESA and don’t want to give the mistaken impression to people on ESA that we have shifted from our publicly-stated plan to start migrating people from September”.

Disabled activist Gail Ward, a long-standing member of grassroots groups Disabled People Against Cuts and Black Triangle Campaign, and founder of the Hand2MouthProject, which helps and trains those claiming universal credit on how the system works, said Churchill’s written statement had been “absolutely misleading”.

She added: “I am concerned for claimants because they are being used as guinea pigs, as usual.”

Ward said Churchill had also misled MPs by telling them DWP had “developed and tested a new ‘enhanced support’ journey for income support and employment and support allowance customers who require additional assistance”, when the email suggested this had not been completed and was still being tested.

She said: “It seems the DWP is in a shambles and needs reform, as staff are unsure of the rules as much as claimants a lot of the time.

“Claimants are telling me when they ring [DWP] they get told one thing, and when the claimant questions it at a later date they get told something different by another customer service agent.”

Disability News Service (DNS) has asked Churchill to explain why DWP misled MPs about the department’s migration plans, and when it made the decision to send out the June migration notices.

She had not responded by 11am today (Thursday).

DWP was unable to comment in detail because of the rules that civil servants must follow once a general election has been called.

But it said: “We regularly undertake small scale learning activity to develop our approach ahead of plans to move large numbers of legacy benefits customers later this year.

“This activity does not change or alter any previous statements on universal credit migration.”

DWP has been faced with two coroners’ reports and concerns raised by its own staff about its failure to ensure the working-age benefit system is safe for claimants in vulnerable situations.

Only last week, DNS reported how DWP and the Cabinet Office had both been unable to find a report that was supposed to describe how DWP supported “vulnerable” people who rely on universal credit.

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