Tories ignoring impact of UC, says Amesbury
SHADOW employment minister and east Runcorn MP Mike Amesbury has accused the Tory front bench of continuing to ‘buy their head in the sand’ over Universal Credit despite warnings from charities and a Government spending watchdog.
Mr Amesbury said there was mounting evidence that the policy is not fit for purpose and that ministers’ denials about the situation were an ‘insult’ to those working to deal with the impact, adding that the flagship reform was ‘punishing’ those who need to claim due to ill health.
His comments followed a report from the Public Accounts Committee, which found the Department For Work And Pensions had adopted a ‘fortress mentality’ against critics. Meg Hillier, PAC chairwoman, said that an ‘apparent determination to turn a deaf ear to the concerns of claimants, frontline organisations and Parliament is of real concern’.
The DWP’s own survey recently found that 40% of claimants were experiencing financial difficulties eight or nine months into their claim, while according to Macmillan Cancer Support, thousands of cancer patients including many at the end of their lives, will be put at risk if they are forced to move over to Universal Credit.
The charity has called for the system to be fixed before up to 26,000 more patients are moved over to it.
Macmillan said this even applies to those with a terminal diagnosis, because the ‘fast track’ process for anyone with less than six months to live has been removed, meaning patients at the end of their lives are now waiting longer than ever for vital financial support.
It warned that Universal Credit rules mean that cancer patients face a fiveweek wait before they receive any cash as it cited patients as describing the system as a ‘nightmare’ to navigate, or humiliating – with one brain tumour sufferer reporting having had to sit in front of a computer for six hours at the job centre to fill in his claim leaving him feel as though he was being ‘penalised for being unwell’.
The National Audit Office also found that around two out of three claimants with health conditions or disabilities did not receive their first payment on time, so many with cancer will face even longer delays.
The UK’s biggest food bank network The Trussell Trust has also raised concerns after it handed out a record 1.3m food parcels to an estimated 666,000 recipients in 2017-18, up 13% on the previous year.
It said food banks in areas where the full universal credit service had been in place for 12 months or more were four times as busy, recording an average 52% increase in the number of threeday emergency food packages distributed.
The trust said many universal credit claimants had come to food banks after long waits for payment and administrative problems pushed them into debt, ill health and rent arrears.
It has previously cited waits during the switch between benefits types as the main reason in Halton for residents having to request emergency food.
But speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, employment minister Alok Sharma said job centre staff and claimants are happy with benefits overhaul, and when asked to respond to the Trussell Trust’s claims about food bank use, said there were ‘very many reasons’ for food bank use and said they could not be attributed to just one factor.
The Government and DWP argue that Universal Credit helps jobseekers back into work.
Mr Amesbury said: “These continued denials by the Government of the gross, abject failure of this policy is frankly an insult not only to those many people impacted by these failures, but also by the charities, cross-party groups and other experts who are lining up to say ‘look, wait a minute, this just isn’t working’.
“Their relentless desire to press ahead with this punishing policy regardless of the evidence is proof that this is an ideologically-driven agenda, not something which is truly intended to help those in our society when they need it most.”