The DWP appeared upbeat about the progress of managed migration when they appeared before the commons work and pensions committee last week, claiming the failure rate is within a “tolerable limit” and close to zero. However, they still resorted to cheap tricks to make it harder for the committee to get to the truth.
When asked about the managed migration of employment and support allowance (ESA) claimants onto universal credit, Neil Couling, the Senior Responsible Owner for Universal Credit, told the MPs that “It might surprise the Committee, but we already have about 100,000—just a tad over…Out of 900,000 ESA people. We have got them on to universal credit.”
Couling claimed that nobody on ESA was being left behind.
“The attrition rates are basically zero if your concern was people who were not claiming. About 96% of people do claim, but you have a natural rate of termination of that . . . That is the normal rate. We are basically getting people over on to universal credit, with the exception of tax credits, which we have spoken about before, I think, at previous hearings. For ESA, it is almost complete; I do not want to say it is absolute, but it is within a tolerable limit.”
It is definitely good news that so far the drop out rate for ESA migration is very low. But if the DWP had automated the process and transferred claimants over themselves, then there would have been no failure rate at all. Let alone one that the DWP regards as within a “tolerable limit”.
But one concern is that the DWP have only transferred 100,000 ESA claimants since September, a period of around 5 months, but they are now increasing the migration rate to over 60,000 a month.
Couling says that they can handle the increased rate of telephone claims, explaining “Normally, telephony claims run at 2% to 3%. We are seeing 15% and 16% for ESA, but we would expect that. We are set up to handle that, because you have lower rates of digital capability and awareness.”
But there is also the issue of the very considerable amount of staff time that needs to be devoted to claimants who do not respond to a migration notice, or who drop out part way through the process.
As Couling set out “If people do not respond to our migration notice and they are on ESA, we do not switch off their entitlement to employment and support allowance without attempting further contact. We send text messages, where we have phone numbers. We contact other parties—social services and others—who may be in contact with the claimant. We check our old records to see if we have any routes in. If none of that works, we then offer a visit, and we try to visit the claimant.”
As month after month of very high volumes of migrations are begun, the concern is that DWP staff will not have the time to go through this rigorous process for every ESA claimant who is unable to engage, and corners will start to be cut by staff under pressure to stick to the very tight migration timetable.
Because it is definitely the case that things still go wrong.
Last November, the DWP announced that it had introduced a technical fix to ensure that ESA claimants would not be required to provide fit notes and that they would also be transferred to the same group, limited capability for work or limited capability for work-related activity, in UC.
Yet, Benefits and Work continues to hear from a smaller – but very definitely not zero – number of people for whom this is still not working.
Two weeks ago, Martin told us that he was asked “to provide fit notes pending a new health assessment”.
Another commentor in the past fortnight said that his son, who has had a brain injury for almost thirty years has been asked to attend a jobcentre and provide evidence of his condition.
And H told us just yesterday that his brother, diagnosed with learning difficulties and autism and who is in the support group, has been asked to provide a fit note.
So, there is definitely reason for scepticism when the DWP say that everything is going smoothly for virtually everyone.
And that scepticism is likely to be increased by the underhand tactics employed by the DWP to avoid scrutiny.
In November, after their last meeting with the department, the work and pensions committee wrote to the DWP asking a series of questions “about how the most severely disabled people are going to be protected” during managed migration.
The DWP chose not to reply to that letter until the very last moment, at 6.45pm the evening before their meeting with the work and pensions committee. As the chair of the committee, Debbie Abrahams, remarked at the opening of the session
“That did not really give Members an opportunity to review it. I will ask specific questions on the transitional protections for severely disabled people a little bit later on.”
That the DWP’s tactic had worked was evident when Abrahams did later ask about transitional protection. Abrahams had clearly failed to understand that claimants do not have to apply separately for it.
This meant that she was unable to continue with any further questions, saying “I will re-check the wording. Obviously, I have had only a short time between receiving the letter last night and being able to speak with you today.”
That the DWP chose to use this cheap lawyers trick to avoid scrutiny of what provision they have put in place to protect vulnerable claimants possibly tells us more about managed migration than their claims that the failure rate is almost zero.
You can read the transcript of the work and pensions committee session here.
