Welfare reform: leaving the poor poorer
“In politics, there’s nothing more dangerous than something that everyone thinks is a good idea,” said Helen Lewis in the New Statesman. Universal credit, for instance, “sounds brilliant” in principle. The biggest change to the UK’S benefits regime in a generation, it was designed to simplify the system by replacing six separate benefits, from tax credits to jobseeker’s allowance to housing benefit, with one monthly payment. Iain Duncan Smith, who masterminded the plan as work and pensions secretary, promised it would “make work pay”, so working people would never be worse off. Unfortunately, the project has been undermined by defective IT systems, the “salami-slicing” of the welfare budget and basic design flaws. But in any case, by its very nature universal credit poses a risk to claimants: “when the computer says no, it doesn’t just take away one of half a dozen benefits; it can disrupt the only assistance people are getting”. And now, as the scheme is rolled out nationwide, the charity Citizens Advice warns that it is “a disaster waiting to happen”.
Duncan Smith’s good intentions did not survive austerity, said Nick Cohen in The Observer. Thanks to George Osborne’s cuts, universal credit is significantly meaner than the system it replaces. Millions of working people will find themselves worse off; some will lose government support altogether. The worst of it is that claimants joining the system must wait at least six weeks before receiving their first payment (in practice, a quarter of claimants wait 12 weeks due to glitches, lost documents and so on). This delay – the result of a “coldblooded political decision” to cut costs, rather than “bureaucratic ineptitude” – is a “catastrophe” for many families without savings.
The six-week delay is a “ludicrous policy”, said Jenni Russell in The Times. Everyone who transfers from existing benefits to universal credit – some eight million people, ultimately – will see regular payments interrupted by a long “void”. And benefit claimants, by and large, don’t have the resources to manage by themselves in the meantime. In pilot areas, where universal credit has already been rolled out, the results are “dire”. In Croydon, council rent arrears have rocketed from 10-40%. Claimants are being evicted from their homes and using food banks to stay alive. This is a “well-meant programme” which “deserves to work”. But the payments must be made much more quickly, and proper support must be provided to those switching over. Universal credit needs to be fixed before it “balloons into a crisis”.