‘Dire circumstances’ feared over benefits system roll-out

MINISTERS are coming under renewed pressure to halt the roll-out of the government’s controversial new benefits payment system amid warnings some claimants could be left in “dire” circumstances.

Dame Louise Casey, the former head of the government’s troubled families team, said the extension of Universal Credit (UC) should be put on hold and a “safety net” installed to ensure vulnerable claimants were not left for weeks without payments.

She said that at a time when the country was “fraying at the edges”, for some people it could be like “jumping over a cliff”.

Her intervention follows the disclosure that 12 Conservative MPs have written to Work and Pensions Secretary David Gauke urging him to pause the roll-out.

The campaign has been led by backbencher Heidi Allen and backed by Andrew Selous, a former parliamentary aide to the ex-work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, the main architect of the scheme.

Mr Gauke is expected to make a decision in the coming days about whether the roll-out of UC – which combines a number of benefits such as housing benefit and tax credits into a single – should be accelerated.

Dame Louise said that while she supported the principle behind UC – that work should always pay – the way it was being implemented “makes my hair stand on end”.

“Where they’re ending up is that benefits will punish. And I don’t think that’s the intention of anybody here,” she told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme. “The fact of the matter is the actual delivery of it means that some people will end up in dire circumstances – more dire than I think we’ve seen in this country for years, and that we have to stop.

“It’s like jumping over a cliff. Once you’ve jumped people end up at the bottom and we don’t want that to happen.

“At a time like this when the country is fraying at the edges, where we have more homeless people than we’ve had for decades on the streets, we need to be kinder to people, we need more kindness.”

The latest warnings come after research by the charity Citizens Advice found many using the system were waiting too long for their payments and getting into debt.