Flagship benefit reforms under fire in region

THE GOVERNMENT’S flagship benefits reform programme is facing a fresh wave of criticism as recipients across Yorkshire reveal how they have been plunged into hardship and members of frontline services of their fears about the imminent roll-out of the controversial overhaul.

The Yorkshire Post today launches a series of special reports about Universal Credit (UC), the Department of Work and Pensions’ welfare system affecting more than 90,000 claimants across the region, including some already blighted by “hidden poverty” in more affluent and rural areas. It comes as high-profile critics outline their concerns, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who last week called for UC to be halted.

Now the region’s politicians, leading charities and families – from former millionaires to those on the breadline – tell of their experiences of the policy.

Over the next couple of months, two of Yorkshire’s biggest cities – Leeds and Sheffield – face further roll-outs of the benefit, with frontline workers stressing that a “tsunami” of issues may arise in certain wards while local authority members remain nervous.

Huge numbers are due to sign up to the system in the near future, while recipients of six socalled “legacy benefits” – including working families on tax credits – transfer to UC. Louise

Haigh, Labour MP for Sheffield Heeley, thinks the next roll-out of UC in November is likely to worsen poverty, “push women back to the 1950s” with payments directed to their partners and “deliberately plunge” people into stress and hardship.

Professor Peter Dwyer, of the Department of Social Policy and Social Work at the University of York, said UC already has the same reputation as the so-called Poll Tax and Bedroom Tax.

Niall Cooper, the director of the national charity Church Action on Poverty, said: “The welfare system should be an anchor to help people stay afloat, but those who have moved to Universal Credit tell us time and again that they have instead been swept deeper into poverty.

“Long waits for payments, inadequate support for applicants, administrative errors and inflexibility in the system are causing severe hardship, increased debt and destitution, and forcing more people to turn to food banks.”

But Alok Sharma, Minister of State for Employment said: “By mirroring the world of work, Universal Credit is a fundamental reform since the inception of the welfare state. It replaces a complex myriad of benefits to simplify the system and make work pay – providing ‘in work support’ and helping with up to 85 per cent of childcare costs.”