Universal credit barriers mean disabled women face ‘terrifying’ risk of destitution, MPs are warned

Disabled women have warned MPs that the continuing process to move them onto universal credit from their existing benefits is risking their health and putting them at threat of destitution.

The disabled women’s organisation WinVisible told the Commons work and pensions committee in an open letter of its serious concerns about the impact of the migration of employment and support allowance (ESA) claimants onto universal credit.

Sir Stephen Timms, the minister for social security and disability, announced in November that the government was now beginning to increase the number of “migration notices” being sent to hundreds of thousands of ESA recipients, with the final notices due to be sent in December 2025.

This will mean the government will finish moving people to universal credit and closing legacy benefits such as ESA by the end of March 2026.

He said then that completing the implementation of universal credit would support the government’s commitment to “getting Britain working”. 

But in this week’s letter to the work and pensions committee, WinVisible includes details of six cases in which disabled women – four of whom are women of colour – have been harmed by the migration process.

WinVisible says the cases “are clear testimony of the reality the minister is denying”.

One ESA claimant, who is severely ill with cancer and was told she only had a year to live, was told she still had to make a claim for universal credit, and it was only after WinVisible helped her complain that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) agreed to cancel her migration notice.

A domestic abuse survivor with ME, anxiety and trauma was told she would have to make a claim for universal credit (UC) despite having told DWP she would not be able to cope with it.

A third woman, who is awaiting major surgery, told WinVisible how DWP helpline staff verbally abused and shouted at her when she requested a third extension to her UC claim deadline.

Even after the extension was agreed, she received three phone calls and messages from DWP during NHS appointments that told her to start the claim, leaving her with “anxiety, panic attacks and heart palpitations”.

A disabled mother of two children under five was left panic-stricken after she was given the wrong payment on moving to UC, and then had to rely on WinVisible to prevent DWP – which had already agreed as a reasonable adjustment that she did not need to have face-to-face meetings because of severe anxiety – from sending someone to her house to verify her claim.

A fifth disabled woman, who is unable to visit her jobcentre, was told there was a six-week wait for a home visit to verify her identity.

After she complained, DWP said the verification could take place by phone, but it then refused to extend her UC claim deadline after a family member died.

The final case involved a woman with a health condition who was not allowed an extension to her new UC claim even though the original paperwork was lost in the post.

The letter, from WinVisible’s Claire Glasman, Kelechi Chioba and Ariane Sacco, told the work and pensions committee and its Labour chair Debbie Abrahams that disabled women face “a terrifying situation of losing our income and becoming destitute if we don’t make a new claim for UC and successfully complete all the steps”. 

They added: “Coping with disability and ill-health in an inaccessible and prejudiced society is hard work in itself. 

“This should be recognised, instead we face a barrage of benefit cuts and changes.”

They said that older people had been allowed to stay on disability living allowance when the Conservative government introduced the new personal independence payment a decade ago, and questioned why the same principle could not be extended to ESA claimants.

WinVisible told Disability News Service yesterday (Wednesday) that there were “multiple problems” with the universal credit system, particularly for “women part-time workers, women fleeing domestic violence and disabled people generally”, while many new disabled claimants receive less under UC than they would have received under the previous “legacy benefits”.

A WinVisible spokesperson said that if the Labour government continued to insist on moving ESA claimants onto UC, those being migrated should be moved onto UC automatically, without any break in their receipt of benefits and without losing out financially.

In the letter, WinVisible includes a link to information that disabled women have put together to help others with the UC migration process.

Credit for this article goes to the Disability News Service