The UK Government has reportedly started drawing up plans to start “slowly” moving the first wave of some 1.7 million claimants from legacy benefits to Universal Credit within weeks.
Mirror Online reports that charities and the UK Government’s welfare watchdog have raised fears over the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) plans to restart the “managed migration” of people still on older style benefits.
The planned migration to Universal Credit was put on hold due to the Coronavirus pandemic and redeployment of DWP staff to other departments to help tackle demand for services, but is now expected to start this Spring.
The DWP is reportedly set to start with a small number of Tax Credit customers, up to a cap of 10,000 households.
They then plan to remove the cap and move onto disability and other benefit claimants, to have everyone on Universal Credit by the end of 2024.
However, the Social Security Advisory Committee (SSAC) warned the change “creates a significant risk” for benefit claimants, many of whom have “complex lives”.
The committee also warned that it also creates risks for the DWP in delivering its plan.
SSAC Committee Chair Dr Stephen Brien warned there must be “independent oversight and scrutiny”.
He announced he would be seeking further advice from experts over plans to lift the 10,000-household cap.
Ministers insist Universal Credit is often more generous than legacy benefits.
The DWP recently launched a new campaign aimed at Working Tax Credits and Child Tax Credit customers, urging them to use a benefits calculator to determine if they could be financially better off triggering a change of circumstances and moving to Universal Credit.
The six-week wait time for the first Universal Credit payment was reduced to five and allowances for people in work were raised with a cut in the taper rate rule.
But campaigners point out some people could still be worse off.
Anela Anwar, chief executive of anti-poverty charity Z2K, said lifting the 10,000 cap must get fresh approval in Parliament.
She said: “It ensures DWP avoids a repeat of the shambolic early stages of Universal Credit, when many people were left without anything to live on for weeks or sometimes even months on end.
“That resulted in MPs getting hundreds of complaints from desperate and angry constituents.”
Dr Brien was one of the original brains behind Universal Credit, and faced questions over his impartiality in 2020 when he became SSAC chairman.
He hit back at this at the time, insisting his work would be “evidence-based”.
He told ministers on the latest change: “I can provide assurance that we do not wish to unduly delay the process.
“We will not be undertaking a large-scale public consultation on this occasion but intend to seek the advice of a small number of experts, including those with significant experience or expertise of agile processes and their governance.”
But he added: “For the public to have confidence in this process and to minimise risk further consideration needs to be given to establishing appropriate independent oversight and scrutiny of the programme as it moves forward.” DWP Permanent Secretary Peter Schofield said in November that he was “determined” to see Universal Credit fully rolled out by December 2024.
He told MPs: “We got the funding in the spending review to finish this on time.”
The benefit’s director general Neil Couling suggested the transfer would be a “slow, slow, slow experience”, adding: “You need to develop your processes and do that with small volumes.”
A DWP spokesperson said: “Universal Credit is a modern dynamic benefit which supports people in and out of work.
We have always been clear about our ambition to move people over from the legacy systems, which are complex, inefficient and based on aging, inflexible IT.
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