Why has the most visionary social reform for years turned into a fiasco?

Theresa May’s priority over the past few weeks has been to finesse the Government’s strategy for a transitional deal with Brussels that will give Britain a soft landing when we leave the eU.

however, she is also trying to navigate another complex and difficult transition process. Involving millions of Britons, it is the introduction of Universal Credit — the biggest overhaul of the benefits system since the Forties.

In a nutshell, this shake-up of welfare payments was designed to reform the deeply flawed system the Tories inherited from 13 years of Labour government in 2010.

Indeed, it must never be forgotten that Labour left behind a welfare state which betrayed the principles of its key architect, sir William Beveridge, and trapped millions of people in poverty.

The welfare state was created after World War II with the noble aim of eradicating poverty, disease, squalor and idleness.

however, over the years, so many different types of state payment have been set up — relating to housing benefit, disability, childcare and so on — that even experts struggled to make sense of them. Certainly, the recipients were confused.

But — much more worrying — many were left trapped in a debilitating and depressing state of welfare dependency.

For rules meant that there was little incentive for the unemployed to seek work. To provide an example: if someone increased their weekly working hours from 16 to 17, their welfare payments would vanish. This was a stupidity that clearly disincentivised people from seeking work and moving out of unemployment.

as a result, Britain had a shockingly large number of long-term unemployed.

This was bad for individuals’ sense of selfworth. It was bad for the economy. It was a drain on taxpayers. and it encouraged countless otherwise honest citizens to join the black economy — especially migrants who were happy to accept low wages.

HOWeVer,

in one of those rare moments of vision in modern politics, the Tories came up with a revolutionary idea — Universal Credit.

This would be a single monthly payment which merged into one all the separate benefits and tax credits. Crucially, the change was designed to make work pay — instead of people seeing their income drop when they moved off benefits and into low-paid work.

It was also intended to reduce fraud and bureaucratic error which resulted in billions of pounds being lost each year.

Universal Credit was the brainchild of Iain Duncan smith and its implementation was, I believe, the bravest and boldest move that David Cameron made in his six years as Prime Minister.

Like with all good ideas that challenge the status quo and are opposed by vested interest groups and sabotaged by rival political parties, implementation has not been easy.

again and again, the reform has stalled. and after trials in pilot areas, its countrywide introduction has been greeted with howls of protest.

Now, some commentators on the Left are comparing Universal Credit to Margaret Thatcher’s poll tax and say it threatens Mrs May’s premiership.

Where these critics have a case (though their comparison to the poll tax is absurd) is that claimants moving to the new system have to wait six weeks until their first payment arrives. Understandably, this has caused problems in paying basic bills for housing, food, fuel and so forth.

Inevitably, the poorest and most vulnerable in society are suffering — leading to vicious slurs that the Tories are the ‘uncaring’ party, even though Labour supports the principles behind the reform.

The cack-handedness of the Government and officials in handling what is obviously an injustice now risks turning into a huge and potentially dangerous issue for Theresa May. For his part, Mr Duncan smith has warned that not enough money has been allocated for the switchover.

Certainly, events in the Commons last week brought shame on the Government.

Labour raised a motion demanding a pause in the roll-out of Universal Credit so as to give more time to fix the problems.

But Tory Chief Whip Gavin Williamson fell into Corbyn’s trap — calamitously ordering Tory MPs not to vote at all. This meant that Labour won by 299 votes to zero.

This defeat was utterly humiliating for the Government. although the vote has no direct effect on Government policy, it was a considerably symbolic victory for Corbyn.

By abstaining on the vote, it looked as if Tory MPs were showing contempt for the genuine suffering of countless poor people up and down Britain.

But more worrying, this debacle has brought Universal Credit — at heart an excellent and muchneeded reform — into disrepute.

I am not normally one to praise Commons speaker John Bercow, but on this occasion his conduct has been magnificent.

In a shaming slap- down for Williamson and his fellow whips, Bercow granted Labour an emergency debate on the subject, thus forcing Tory MPs to explain themselves.

I found it heart- breaking to hear MPs tell how some constituents have become penniless because of delayed welfare payments and in some cases face eviction from their homes — stories of human suffering that are undoubtedly true.

BUT

such suffering by a few doesn’t mean that this new welfare system is fundamentally flawed. The brutal truth is that the system presided over by the Labour government, which condemned millions of people to hopeless poverty and lifelong unemployment, was far worse.

To blame for the current problems is one man: George Osborne. They are yet another malign legacy of his time as Chancellor, when Universal Credit was announced.

For the admirable Mr Duncan smith, who set up the Centre for social Justice think-tank to ‘put social justice at the heart of politics and tackle the root causes of poverty’, the reform would help people move out of welfare dependency.

But for Mr Osborne, who’s had a long-running feud with the former Tory leader (or to put it bluntly, Mr Osborne hates Mr Duncan smith), Universal Credit was simply an opportunity for the Treasury to save money by paying less welfare. It was Mr Osborne’s insistence on a six-week waiting period before claimants got the new payments.

What is crazy is that there is, of course, a short-term solution to this mess. Mrs May must urgently intervene to cut the waiting period to four weeks — at the very most.

This would start to help end the misery of some of Britain’s poorest people, and, in the long term, rescue Universal Credit — one of the most imaginative social reforms in recent history.