Public Accounts Committee inquiry: universal credit

LITRG’s response focused on the transition of tax credit claimants to universal credit. The submission highlighted that in reality the current transitional protection rules do not meet the government’s commitment – that no-one moving to universal credit, without a change of circumstances, will lose out in cash terms – in some cases. This means that some people may get less universal credit than they were getting on legacy benefits but they will not get transitional protection.

We urged DWP to do a full assessment to get a better understanding of how many people will not get transitional protection even though their award is lower and suggested DWP should make changes to their guidance to make it clear that this may be the case and in what scenarios it is most likely to happen.

The submission also highlighted misleading DWP guidance on transitional protection and problems with transparency around the information being used by DWP to do transitional protection calculations.