The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Universal Credit mandatory managed migration has stripped a severely chronically ill and largely bedbound mother of her benefits for her disabled son. Now, as temperatures drop, and energy bills rise, she can no longer afford the heating to keep her home a safe temperature for their health.
Her experience illustrates the real-world impact of the DWP’s shambolic process that has now denied vital benefits to over 380,000 people. Crucially, it displays the DWP’s blatant systemic ableism, misogyny, and classism at work as it has shunted people over to Universal Credit.
DWP managed migration chaos continues
The DWP began rolling out managed migration in July 2019, as a pilot scheme. This is where the department forces people who have not yet moved to Universal Credit, either voluntarily or because of a change of circumstance, onto it. This is because the new benefit is replacing old ones like Tax Credits.
This forced migration involves the DWP issuing notices, with a three month deadline for claimants to make the move to Universal Credit. It officially began this process in July 2022. Since then, the department has progressively stripped claimants of their benefits.
In November, the Canary revealed the latest figures for all this. For data going up to the end of September 2024, we detailed that:
- The DWP had sent a total of 1,369,367 individuals, or 943,343 households migration notices between June 2022 and September 2024.
- 318,834 people had lost their benefits (29%)
- 185,076 were women (58%)
- 69% of these were Child Tax Credit or working Tax Credit claimants
Crucially then, we pointed out how this was disproportionately impacting women. Alongside this, it’s having a significant toll on households with children. We wrote that:
the data revealed that the DWP has stripped benefits from 151,927 households with children. In other words, it means at least 150k children have seen their parents lose their benefits in the process of the DWP’s mandatory migration.
A reader who saw the article reached out to the Canary about this. She told us that:
I am one of those people stripped of benefits.
Ann wanted to speak out about her appalling experience of the DWP process, and how it has impacted her. Notably, Ann is obviously among the 185,076 women who made up more than half the claimants that the DWP has left without their benefits. Moreover, Ann has a disabled son too – so he’s one of over 150,000 children who’ve had parents lose their benefits in this process.
Ann and her twelve-year-old son
Previously, Ann was a chartered civil engineer. However, due to serious chronic ill health, she is now unable to work. As such, Ann has been claiming contributory Employment Support Allowance (ESA).
She falls into the ‘support group’ for this, because her long-term health condition severely limits what she can do. Alongside this, she gets Personal Independence Payment (PIP) to help with the costs of managing her chronic health condition. Separately, she also receives a small ill health occupational pension.
Her twelve-year-old son is disabled, so also claims Disability Living Allowance (DLA). Crucially, the government had been issuing Ann Child Tax Credits (CTC) to help with costs for her son, since she’s unable to work, and on a low income.
CTC comprises of the following (2024 rates):
- Up to £545 (just under £10.50 a week) as the basic amount – known as the ‘family element’
- Up to £3,455 (around £66 a week) – the ‘child element’
- Up to £4,170 (approx. £80 a week) on top of this if the child is disabled. Specifically, this applies to children under 16 claiming DLA, or over 16 claiming PIP.
There are particular rules around this latter one, such as the requirement for them to be still in full-time education, or approved training (up to the age of 20).
Ann would have claimed somewhere close to the full amount of these, as her CTC equated to circa £8,000 a year. Since her son claims DLA, she was eligible for the extra CTCs for this too.
Of course, CTC is one of the benefits that the DWP has been phasing out in its forced migration to Universal Credit. And it was this that the department has now stopped for Ann. But notably, she was unable to make the move over to Universal Credit in time. So now, Ann has completely lost her CTC, and has no Universal Credit in its place.
Most significantly though, it was the DWP’s own incompetent services and half-baked process that was to blame for Ann losing out.
DWP managed migration helpline hopelessly uninformed
The DWP had sent Ann a migration notice letter towards the end of February. Obviously, it signified the impending cut-off of her CTC. As with all people the DWP is forcing over to Universal Credit, it gave her three months to do this.
In April, she phoned the DWP migration helpline for advice. This was to enquire how migrating her CTC over to Universal Credit would impact, if at all, her contributory ESA.
In theory, the DWP managed migration process doesn’t apply to people on either new style or contributory ESA. It is only mandating that people on income-related ESA shift over to Universal Credit. As such, shifting from CTC to Universal Credit shouldn’t affect contributory ESA. However, the DWP deducts the contributory ESA from Universal Credit payments.
In other words, while Ann’s CTC move to Universal Credit wouldn’t have impacted her contributory ESA, her contributory ESA would impact the Universal Credit she would receive. Technically, the DWP would bring her contributory ESA under its Universal Credit system. And to do this, it would convert it to new style ESA. There’s no material difference between these in practice, so moving over to Universal Credit shouldn’t affect Ann’s contributory ESA.
However, the problem was that no one at the DWP could tell her any of this. She explained to the Canary how an advisor had:
escalated the matter up her chain of command by many levels, speaking to seven or eight different advisors in the process, and was able to confirm that they had no knowledge of how it would be affected and that it was likely that it hadn’t yet been considered.
And despite being unable to confirm the possible impacts, they offered Ann no further resolution to this. Notably, they also failed to inform her that she could apply for an extension for her move over to Universal Credit.
Losing thousands in income and the Warm Home Discount
It meant that the three months elapsed without Ann getting any information on this from the DWP. So, by the close of May, her CTC came to an end, but she hadn’t been able to apply to Universal Credit for fear it could impact her ESA.
While Ann could now make a new claim for Universal Credit, she has lost her transitional protection. This was supposed to ensure she’d be no worse off after the forced move. Of course, in practice, this isn’t actually necessarily the case. Many chronically ill and disabled people moving over will in reality face a cut to their benefits through a series of regressive rules around transitional protection.
Nonetheless, the DWP staff’s ignorance meant that the department effectively denied Ann benefits in its managed migration process altogether.
Ann has now gone half a year without CTC, with nothing replacing them. So, she has so far lost around £4,000 in benefits for her disabled son. CTC had also meant she could get free dental care, as well as the government’s Warm Home Discount (WHD). Now, she has lost both these on top of the substantial cut in income.
So right as energy bills have risen by on average £149, Ann will have lost up to virtually the same amount – £150 – off her electricity bill.
Of course, to be eligible to receive the WHD in the first place with CTC, you have to be living on a low income anyway. For instance, a single parent household with one child would need to have an income below £24,479 for 2024/25 to qualify. The government set this threshold to maximise the number of people in fuel poverty on a low income getting the rebate on their electricity bill. In other words, people claiming Tax Credits below this threshold were significantly likely to be fuel poor.
Heating or eating: poor households hit hardest by loss of WHD
Notably also, that threshold equates to less than the 2024/25 national minimum wage (NMW) rates for 40 hours a week (high end of full-time). So it means that it’s people living on an income that’s lower than a NMW full-time role who this applies to. Conversely then, it also means that people living on the equivalent of a NMW full-time role won’t receive the WHD.
The point is, it’s only Tax Credit claimants on income equivalents below the UK’s legal pay floor that are eligible for it. And given the NMW isn’t even enough to meet the basic costs of living anyway, all Tax Credit claimants who’ve been getting it are likely struggling to afford even the essentials.
So, many of the poorest households on Tax Credits would also be losing out on the WHD when the DWP stopped their benefits during its forced migration.
Moreover, this threshold is also well below the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s ‘Minimum Income Standard (MIS)’. Essentially, this is the minimum income a person needs to meet a decent standard of living. In other words, not just the basic needs to survive, but what they need to participate fully in society. In 2024, for a single person, this was £28,000. So, in other words, every single person household with a child on CTC eligible for WHD, is living on substantially less than the MIS as well.
It’s little wonder then that Ann told the Canary that she is now unable to afford to use the heating most of the time.
Making Ann’s myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) worse
This is just one of the devastating impacts of the DWP’s managed migration. However, if all this weren’t bad enough, it’s the impact on Ann’s health that really drives home the injustice the DWP has baked into the mandatory move.
Significantly, Ann lives with moderate to severe myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). It is a devastating chronic systemic neuroimmune disease that affects nearly every system in the body. ME causes a range of debilitating symptoms that hugely disrupts patients’ daily lives.
In Ann’s case, she lives between the moderate to severe end of the scale for ME. Typically housebound, moderate ME patients have significantly reduced mobility and are often highly restricted in all daily living activities. Those with severe ME are mostly, if not entirely permanently bed-bound or hospitalised. They are often unable to digest food, communicate, or process information, and are fully dependent on others for their care.
In all its severities, post-exertional-malaise (PEM) is the hallmark feature of ME. This entails a disproportionate worsening of many, if not all other symptoms after even minimal physical, social, or mental activities.
Unsurprisingly then, Ann’s interactions with the DWP had significant consequences for her ME. She told the Canary that:
As for the impact, well, my illness is severely exacerbated by stress, as many are. So my health is worse, my pain is significantly worse. I am trying my best to at least manage my illness to keep it stable and mitigate the long term impact of being largely bed-bound with moderate to severe CFS/ME, but every contact with DWP undermines this and prompts another set back.
That is, the DWP persistent failures in Ann’s managed migration has actively exacerbated her symptoms. And that puts it lightly. The reality of this for Ann will likely be prolonged periods of PEM.
Layer upon layer of health harms through DWP managed migration
Of course, there are multiple layers to this in terms of how the DWP has put her health at risk.
For one, the DWP’s processes themselves would have each caused her ME to flare. Ann had to expend her limited energy to engage with managed migration over to Universal Credit in numerous ways that would have had ramifications for her health.
Firstly, the very fact Ann had to move over to Universal Credit in the first place, without any form of support from the DWP, is appalling enough in itself. Ann’s experience draws attention to the fact that little attention, if any at all, has been paid to the additional burden the process would have on chronically ill and disabled individuals claiming old-style benefits.
Nothing in the process takes into account that many chronically ill and disabled claimants wouldn’t be able to do this without support. Nor that many may not have access to support either. Many people with severe ME couldn’t do this – not least due to the cognitive impairment that typically comes with the condition. But also quite simply because they might live in constant, sometimes excruciating pain with serious sensitivities to light and sound that triggers any number of severe symptoms.
Even when some can physically and mentally manage the process – as with Ann – it doesn’t mean they should have to. The fall-out from doing so can lead to similarly severe health consequences, sometimes long-term. As ever, the DWP hasn’t thought about the most vulnerable people in its design for this mandatory requirement.
Systemic ableism baked into the DWP
However, it’s not just the design either that’s a problem. At every stage, and in a multitude of ways, the DWP threatened Ann’s health.
Ann could have got an extension to transition to Universal Credit, but no one told her about this. Plus, the onus would always have been on her to initiate it. That’s more bureaucracy that Ann would have to deal with – leaving her less energy and wellness for more urgent daily care needs, and potentially causing PEM. She’d also have to do this once every four weeks – and each time would compound this impact.
Speaking on the phone to the managed migration advisors would also have drained Ann of vital energy and relative moments of wellness. And once again, this could have triggered more possible PEM.
Additionally, the distress that losing her CTC would have had on Ann’s health is incalculable. Now, the financial strain it has placed her under will make managing her ME even harder as well. She’ll be forced to divert finances she needs for her health, to other basic daily living expenses for her and her son.
Not to mention that disabled people already have on average over £1,000 in extra disability-related costs to have the same standard of living as non-disabled households. Put another way, the additional costs of disability account for on average 67% of household income after housing costs. So, Ann’s sudden enormous drop in income due to the DWP stripping her of her CTC will invariably intensify this glaring disparity for her too.
And crucially, ME is a chronic health condition made worse by fluctuating and extreme temperatures. Ann mused to the Canary that:
At least being stuck in bed means that I can get away with never having the heating on if my son isn’t at home or is with his dad…
ME patients typically need specifically regulated temperatures to keep their symptoms in check, and prevent or manage PEM. It’s not a matter of if, not being able to afford the heating this winter WILL harm Ann. Again, this has every potential of tipping her into more frequent, or even constant severe ME.
In short, the DWP’s shambolic process that has denied her benefits is putting both her and her disabled child’s health at risk. Most concerningly, the DWP’s unconscionable catalogue of failures, and built-in inaccessibility and ableism risks pushing her more permanently into severe ME.
DWP managed migration – but errors all round
However, these also haven’t been the only issues Ann has had with the DWP in recent months. Alongside its failure to inform her in time for her to make the move over to UC, the DWP had previously levied another debt on Ann too. This was in relation to her contribution-based ESA. She expressed to the Canary that they’re now chasing her CTC debt:
at the same time as I am still paying off debt from the LAST mistake they made with my payments
This prior debt is for around £100 – which she owes to the DWP. And as Ann implied, it concerns a DWP error. Specifically, it’s over its failure to reduce her ESA. This relates to a small occupational ill health pension Ann is also claiming since she stopped being able to work.
Each April, Ann’s pension had risen with inflation. This is because, with contribution-based ESA, pension income above £85 a week affects how much of the award a claimant gets. Specifically, the DWP will reduce the ESA by half the value of any pension income over that amount.
Ann explained that:
Some years the adjustment was literally pennies per week due to low inflation, but then the cost of living crisis happened and inflation went through the roof.
DWP drops the ball, then pushes the onus on claimants
Every year, the DWP had liaised with her pension provider directly to confirm the amount it had risen by. The department would then adjust her contributory ESA accordingly. However, in April 2023, the DWP didn’t do this. So, Ann said that:
Come November the threatening letters start arriving demanding back pay and also a penalty fine on top.
Notably though, the DWP hadn’t at any point informed Ann that it hadn’t contacted her provider as usual, or made the adjustments to her contributory ESA. As such, Ann had no knowledge that the onus would be on her to inform the DWP of her pension’s increase. And as Ann pointed out, it also meant she wouldn’t have known to look out for this either. She expressed how:
This was the year that my son was sitting his KS2 SATs, finishing primary school, transitioning to secondary school and also undergoing various assessments etc for his own health issues for which he now receives DLA and which made all of these events very trying for him. Needless to say that with all this going on I didn’t notice that they had done their usual adjustments, not least because the timescale when they did them varied anyway.
Taking more of a toll
However, despite all this, Ann said that the DWP had “refused to listen” when she called them. She explained that she:
had expected them to act as they always have. That their behaviour has set a precedent etc, and they just keep shouting that “it’s in the legislation” and that it’s my responsibility.
Given the department’s obstinance with the penalty, Ann initiated legal action. She told the Canary that:
When they saw the case I was presenting they conceded before it went before a judge.
Ann still owes the DWP the overpayment itself. Now however, she explained that her win on the penalty meant she had:
reduced the debt by about 30%.
But, the whole process had taken a toll on Ann’s ME as well, causing her symptoms to flare. Once again, the DWP’s cock-ups, and its punitive and ableist system had put her health at risk.
Another limit the DWP hasn’t updated in years
It’s also worth noting that the DWP hasn’t updated this £85 threshold since it introduced contribution-based ESA in 2001.
Ann pointed this out in the context of the Carer’s Allowance upcoming earnings limit increase. While this too is still inadequate, it’s rising to £196 – or 16 hours on NMW from £151. It means more carers will be able to claim the benefit.
If we’re to take a similar approach with the pension income limit for contributory ESA, then:
- In 2001, the NMW was £4.10, meaning the limit was equivalent to over 20 hours of employment.
- Now, NMW is £11.44, so it’s only worth 7.4 hours of employment.
Effectively, the pension limit’s income value has eroded as the cost of living has increased over the past 23 years. In 2023, the DWP-sponsored non-departmental Social Security Advisory Committee (SSAC) recommended that the department should scrap this limit entirely. Crucially, it also noted how:
The rationale for means-testing a contributory benefit against unearned income is not clear.
So, the DWP has also foisted this debt on her due to a seemingly arbitrary limit. Most gallingly, this is a limit it hasn’t once up-rated in over twenty years.
Department of wrecking people’s health
All told, Ann is now around £8,000 worse off a year. The government has lumped her with two benefits-related debts, together worth over £1,000. Alongside this, she has lost free dental care, and her WHD worth up to £150 off her electricity bill.
Her contributory ESA, PIP, small pension, and son’s DLA won’t be enough to meet even their basic needs. That’s without even factoring in the extra costs for disabled people’s daily living. This is the real-world reality of the DWP’s so-called managed migration process. As it turns out, the DWP isn’t ‘managing’ this well at all.
Ann told the Canary that:
I am trying, as best as I am able, to be a parent and rebuild some form of life in between tussles with HMG in one form or another. Obviously every health assessment and/or issue like this writes off at least a year, but I am slowly trying to learn what I can and cannot do without my body going into shock and shutting down, which is what happens when I do too much!
And among the 380,000 people the DWP has stripped benefits from in this forced move, there are likely to be many more Ann’s. This is the callous human cost behind the DWP’s money-saving migration exercise to Universal Credit.
Introduced under the Tories, Labour has ploughed ahead with it since. It has done so knowing full-well the staggering scale of people the DWP process is denying vital benefits to. Ann’s story should be the wake-up call the new government needs to halt DWP managed migration to Universal Credit in its tracks. If it fails to do so, Labour is saying that it’s content continuing a process. that’s irrevocably harming poor, chronically ill and disabled people, women, and children. Ann most certainly isn’t alone in going through this, but let her appalling experience be one of the last.
Then, Labour must fix this too. And make damn sure that Ann and every other person the DWP has cruelly ripped vital benefits away from, have these properly restored, backdated, and fairly funded to meet their needs – not just to survive – but truly thrive.
