I wish that people who should know better would stop offering 'lifelines' and encouragement to Iain Duncan Smith and his hideous Universal Credit project. As if having the Shadow Minister for Work and Pensions proposing cross-party discussion to salvage it wasn't demoralising enough, on the eve of a scathing National Audit Office report on the mismanagement of the IT for the project The Guardian, no less, waded clumsily into the debate with an editorial encouraging IDS to 'soldier on'.
Universal Credit is currently a fiasco, but with the potential to become a fully-fledged disaster. I've blogged before about the ill-conceived 'digital by default' intention that all claims will be made online or, in exceptional circumstances, by telephone, and this is indeed happening in 'Pathfinder' areas, but while claimants must use computers and there is no provision for them to use paper forms, their actual claims are being printed out in the offices where they are being processed and their benefit calculated manually with the aid of a spreadsheet by extra staff drafted in for the purpose - about as low-tech as the 21st Century gets. Furthermore, claims are still only being taken from single jobseekers in robust good health without children, earnings or housing costs; hardly a test of any system, since the average Year Three class could probably handle the calculations for that scenario.
Panic set in when one of the UC claimants joined someone else's family, and since once a claim is made for Universal Credit, you're stuck with it, the rest of the household will now lose their income support, tax credits and housing benefit and be reassessed for UC, despite there being no systems in place to deal with such a complex claim. Had the claimant's new partner understood this, perhaps they would have been less keen to get together, but s/he is stuck with it now - even if they split up, the partner will also never be rid of Universal Credit.
This raises the grim spectre of UC spreading from claimant to cohabitee, and thus out of the quarantined 'Pathfinder' areas, like some ghastly new STD, while welfare rights organisations warn of the dangers with a gloomy 'Don't Die of Ignorance' style campaign and struggle to develop the case law to treat it effectively.
So why is 'catching' Universal Credit such a risk? Government statistics (yeah, I know...) suggest that approximately 3.2 million claimants will be better of on UC than their present benefits (albeit rigged by tampering with Working Tax Credit entitlement) and there's the lure of 'simplification' to make it appeal further, assuming you can get an Internet connection for long enough to actually make your claim. But if we take that as our starting point - the one claim for all benefits 'advantage' - it swiftly becomes apparent that this is, in gambling terms, putting everything on 'red' or 'black'. And with sanctions and questionable medical assessments making claiming social security benefits as predictable as a roulette game, that carries a massive risk.
At present, if your JSA is sanctioned or your ESA stopped after an Atos misdiagnosis, your main subsistence benefit may well be thrown into chaos, but at least any assistance via housing benefit that you're getting to keep the roof over your head can be maintained. You may need to make a 'zero income' housing benefit claim a bit sharpish, but the Council don't care if you're fit for work, seeking it actively or not, and while you serve out your suspension or make your appeal, your rent continues to be paid. Similarly, if you have children and find yourself in either of those predicaments, at least you know the Child Tax Credit will be paid while you fight your cause.
Contrast this with the fate of the Universal Credit claimant. Sanctioned - perhaps for missing your 'signing on time' due to a late bus or even a job interview (seriously, that isn't an urban myth) - and everything stops, because you aren't entitled to any of it unless you're meeting your 'claimant commitment'. Disputing a fit to work decision? Try surviving your new 'mandatory reconsideration' period with no money for you, but also nothing for your rent or your kids.
It may be convenient to have all your eggs in one basket, but that's only until someone takes the basket away.
