Our plan to fix universal credit
Regrettably, it’s a fact that universal credit is causing misery to millions of people across the UK and the inadequate sticking plaster solutions will not work.
This week some of the huge problems with the policy were laid bare in a report by Citizens Advice Scotland, which revealed that rent arrears in Scotland had rocketed by 40 per cent since the implementation of Tory welfare reforms and found that 73 per cent of housing tenants on universal credit were in arrears.
It is obvious that this policy is failing. Therefore the SNP is proposing a seven-point plan to radically reform universal credit with key changes that will make the policy fit for purpose, which include immediately halting the roll-out, ending and reversing the benefits freeze, abolishing unfair sanctions and fixing payment delays and errors.
The SNP has called consistently for a halt to the roll-out over the last five years. Given the weight of evidence that this policy is completely failing and hammering the most vulnerable in our society, it is simply staggering that the Tories at Westminster are only just waking up to the problems staring them in the face on this issue.
Whilst the UK Government now plans to slow down the roll-out from 2019, this is no consolation to people in my Clackmannanshire and Dunblane constituency, who have seen this failed policy implemented with all its manifest failings.
Last week Stirling’s Tory MP Stephen Kerr spoke up once again in a debate on universal credit as a “proponent of universal credit”. He was gushing with his praise for the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who is administering this failing policy. He also paid tribute to organisations such as Stirling Council, Stirling Citizens Advice and even foodbank Start Up Stirling, which are picking up the pieces with those being hit hardest by Tory universal credit without any acknowledgement that it is his party’s toxic policy that is causing the problem.
Mr Kerr’s boundless enthusiasm for this failing policy is at odds with evidence and expert opinion that it is hammering the most vulnerable. Whilst the failings of domestic policies continue to be ignored by this Tory government, we continue to witness the unfolding disaster of Brexit and the economic catastrophe it promises to visit on Scotland – which, let’s not forget, rejected Brexit by 62 per cent to 38 per cent.
Because the Prime Minister’s negotiations have stalled, we now face the grim prospect of a blindfold Brexit, where key decisions regarding our future relationship with the EU will be postponed until some unspecified point in future. This is simply storing up problems for later, since the lesson of the past two years has been the inability of the Government to make progress on these matters.
And if these matters are not agreed before the UK leaves the EU in less than six months’time the negotiating position of the UK will be far weaker than it is now. This scenario – a blindfold Brexit - is unacceptable and would merely replace a no-deal Brexit with a no-detail Brexit. This is not what the public was promised and multiplies the uncertainty facing many Scottish businesses who either export to or import from the EU.
The UK Government must recognise that the leastworst Brexit scenario is one which sees us continue membership of the single market and customs union. Anything less risks dire consequences for our economy and jobs.