Industry News


Further reforms of Universal Credit needed to fix system


The charity Citizens Advice has called for a “root and branch overhaul” of Universal Credit, to ensure it delivers on it’s promise of being a fairer and simpler system of support to individuals and families in need. It says that a half of all claimants who


came to it for help with the new benefit are at risk of being evicted, owing to rent arrears and hardship. Since the initial roll out, the charity has helped over 190,000 people with UC issues. It acknowledges improvements in claimants’ circumstances as a result of changes made in 2017, but says these have “only made a dent in the problem, rather than fixed it.” It summarises the main problems as -


people face particular problems during the five-week wait for a first payment but financial problems last well beyond this; UC is paid in rigid ways that make it hard for some to budget and leaves little financial wriggle room; and deductions for debt repayments are common, affecting more than half of all claimants in September 2018. Further changes are needed so that


people are paid enough to live on and in a way that reflects people’s lives and how they budget. Citizens Advice is calling for the following actions: • Make sure people can access adequate financial support at the beginning of their claim and look to improve Universal Credit design to reduce the wait;


• Ensure Universal Credit provides enough to live on by reviewing how benefit rates are set and ensuring deductions are manageable; and


• Help people to budget by designing Universal Credit around real lives, providing greater flexibility in how UC is paid and income is assessed.


U-turns on Universal Credit welcomed


by campaigners, but further changes are being demanded. Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd


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revealed plans to scrap extending a benefits cap on families with more than two children (for children born before the system began in 2017). She also proposes lifting the freeze on benefit levels when the current cap ends in 2020 and consulting MPs before rolling Universal Credit out to more than 3 million claimants. Charities like the Child Poverty Action Group


said the decision was “fantastically good news”, but it is still calling for the two-child cap to be scrapped for all other families. Labour and the SNP said the change “does not go far enough”. There is also pressure on Ministers to speed up


the process for making payments to new claimants. This has already fallen from six to five weeks, but


softening of the Government’s welfare programme to alleviate its impact on low-income families has been welcomed


Rudd is proposing to run a pilot involving 10,000 people and learn from this. Ms Rudd said: “I’m making a number of changes


to our welfare system to make sure that it delivers on the intent which is to be a safety net and also to be a compassionate and fair system helping people into work.” Dropping the benefits cap on families with two


children born before UC was introduced is thought to affect about 15,000 households, while up to 3 million people were expected to migrate from the old benefits system to Universal Credit in the coming months and years. Frank Field, who chairs the Work and


Pensions Committee, was supportive of the changes. He said: “I strongly welcome the decision not to press ahead with what could have been the cruellest benefit cut in history. At the eleventh hour, she has prevented thousands of children from being plunged into poverty by an unjustifiable retrospective policy.”


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