I
am delighted that Labour have won a debate on a proposal to pause the roll-out
of Universal Credit. For the good of
millions of less well-off citizens, it is vital that this happens.
Personally,
I think Universal Credit is so flawed that it should be stopped in its tracks
and the whole project reworked, as it is simply not fit to be at the core of
our Social Security system for a generation or more. I’m sure others will have briefed you on the
many problems being encountered with UC.
Rightly, the long wait for the first payment has been grabbing the
headlines recently but there is another issue around ‘waiting’ that seems to
have slipped below the radar, and that is the seven ‘waiting days’ at the start
of new claims.
Since
2014, when the number was increased from three, the first seven days of your
claim for JSA or ESA have been ‘waiting days’ for which you receive no
benefit. If you lodged a claim today (13th
October), your payments would be based on entitlement from 20th
October. However, there are no waiting
days for Income Support and Tax Credits, while Housing Benefit awards are
usually calculated from the Monday following your date of claim. Someone claiming JSA or ESA for her/himself
and her/his partner therefore has seven days without payment of that benefit at
the start of their claim, but can get support for their children and housing
costs during that first week. Someone
claiming Income Support (usually a carer or lone parent) also receives their
earnings replacement benefit from their date of claim.
As
you know, Universal Credit rolls all of these benefits into one. It also counts the first seven days of the
claim as ‘waiting days’ in the majority of new claims. This means that a UC claimant not only misses
out on their earnings replacement benefit for seven days, they receive no
support for their children for that week, nor for their housing costs. For a jobless couple with two children and
rent of £100 per week, instead of missing out on around £115 due to waiting
days under the current regime, they would be over £300 down under UC. For larger families and where rents are
higher than they are in Stoke-on-Trent (ie. just about everywhere!) the losses
from extending the waiting day principle to children and housing costs can be
significantly higher.
The
higher this shortfall for the first week, the less chance there is of the
family affected being able to clear the debts built up as a result – especially
rent arrears – when their first payment eventually arrives. For those not working, UC gives them an
income set at no more than the minimum this Government believes they need to
live on; for families hit by the Benefit Cap, it is often very much less. They have no money to clear debts and pay
down rent arrears. By the time working
families have paid travelling costs and part of their childcare, they too are
unlikely to have spare cash.
I
do hope you will be able to support the call for a UC roll-out pause when it
comes to Parliament as I genuinely believe there is a chance to win this
vote. I hope you will also be able to
support your colleagues lobbying for further major reforms of UC; you might
urge a review of the ‘waiting days’ concept as one way to make it less
punishing.
