Universal Credit casts a long shadow over the Christmas festivities
In Edinburgh West we are braced for a bit of an onslaught over the next few weeks. Why? Two words: Universal Credit.
The response they evoke in many people remind me of two other words which eventually proved the undoing of Margaret Thatcher’s party in Scotland: poll tax.
Now, three decades after the introduction of that change, the much criticised roll-out of the well-intentioned, but underfunded, new benefits system arrives on our doorsteps on November 28.
And if it has the same, or even approaching it, impact that it has had elsewhere in the country many people could be facing long waits for payments they are entitled to, rent arrears and stress.
Almost six thousand households in Edinburgh West who are currently entitled to some or all of the six legacy benefits which are merged into UC are about to affected. Just in time for Christmas.
The most vulnerable in our society, could be faced with disruptive and distressing changes at the most difficult and expensive time of the year. I have a horrible feeling that this year has the potential to be anything but merry for too many of my constituents. We are already making plans in the office for the extra advice surgeries and response over the holiday we fear might be needed.
But perhaps the most frustrating aspect is that it didn’t have to be like this. And still doesn’t. It wouldn’t have taken any Hollywood-style “Christmas miracle”. Just some cash from the Treasury and common sense on the government benches to create a very different picture from the one that has emerged.
In the first 14 areas of Scotland where the new system was introduced Citizens Advice Scotland has reported that one in five claimants has waited more than six weeks for payments. And charities claim that as many as one million children could be pushed into poverty by the changes by 2020.
Which bring me back to how we could have avoided, and still could limit, that damage.
I am happy to confess that I am one of the many people who was impressed when I first heard about the principles of Universal Credit.
Surely making benefits easier to claim and helping people back into work are aims we can all, or at least most of us, support.
But the potential to achieve them was severely dented in 2015 when the then chancellor decided to take £3 billion out of what was to be invested in the system.
Even now that could have been fixed if the current chancellor has used last month’s Budget to reinvest that cash.
If the Government would listen to the very many appeals to pause the system and fix it there is every chance that it could work in the way it was originally intended.
Instead, as I said, my office and I are organising special advice surgeries for those who may suddenly find themselves waiting for the money they depend on.
We are preparing to hear from the families forced into rent arrears by a system with too many delays and which doesn’t take account of the difficulty it can cause in a household used to weekly income when suddenly that money will not arrive until the end of the month.
We are anticipating issues for individuals who have been used to their housing benefit being paid direct to their landlords now suddenly dealing with a new, often foreign to them, system of monthly payments from which they have to do their own budgeting.
And let’s be clear – none of this is scaremongering. We have already seen where UC has been introduced that those very problems have contributed to increased, often dangerous stress for those who may already be suffering mental health issues. A system which claims to be helping then becomes an added burden, a new difficulty in a life already filled with challenges.
And if all of that were not enough, I’ve had constituents visit me who have never been in rent arrears, never had any issue with their landlord, but suddenly find themselves being told to find somewhere else to live.
The reason? Their landlord is selling up to avoid the hassle that comes with renting out property under the new benefits system. They are seeing the crippling mountain of rent arrears that is building up elsewhere and getting out before it affects them.
Who can blame them? But at least they have the option.
So many of those whose lives are being blighted by the unintended consequences of trying to reform the benefits system on the cheap do not have that luxury.
So many of them would get out of it if they could. It was supposed to help them do precisely that. But it isn’t.
Last week a new Secretary of State stepped into the breach at the Department of Work and Pensions when Esther Mcvey took flight under cover of a Brexit break-up.
Amber Rudd had a reputation for being reasonable. So many of the hopes for the future of her party were being on her until the Windrush scandal swept her out of the Home Office.
Now her rapid political reincarnation as offered her what may prove to be a poison chalice or an opportunity to regain some of the electorate – and her parliamentary colleagues’ – faith. If she listens to those opposite and around her on the benches, people like me and even the scheme’s creator Iain Duncan Smith, she will take the opportunity to pause the roll-out and fix the problems. There is still time to find a way to ensure the original aim is achieved.
Or she can forge ahead, flaws and all. The consequences of that will be felt immediately by those most at risk in our society. But long-term they may be visited on her party at the ballot box.
The choice is hers.