DWP ‘didn’t consider’ scrapping five-week wait for Universal Credit – because the Tories didn’t want to?
We already knew the DWP hasn’t had any intention of scrapping the five-week wait between claiming Universal Credit and receiving the notice that you’re not receiving anything. But this is revealing:
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has come under renewed pressure to scrap the minimum five-week wait for Universal Credit after a Tory welfare minister admitted the Government ‘didn’t really consider’ the measure.
The welfare delivery minister Will Quince MP was challenged over why the DWP hasn’t scrapped the five-week wait or turned advance payments into grants, which opposition MPs claim would help to protect families affected by the Coronavirus outbreak, during a Work and Pensions Select Committee meeting on Thursday.
Quince told MPs that due to administrative costs of introducing the changes “it wasn’t even really considered as an option” and that the structure of the Universal Credit system is unlikely to change during the crisis.
He said: “Even if we were able to secure the £2.2 billion a year that would be required to do that, it is not operationally deliverable.
Hang on!
Universal Credit was supposed to make the benefit system simpler to administer – and therefore cheaper.
This is an admission that “administrative costs” make even the simplest changes – ending a pointless wait for benefits that we were told was only imposed to make UC emulate payment of the salaries received by middle-class people who were unlikely to claim the benefit… until now.
Alternatively: isn’t it more likely that the Tories are squirming because the real reason they won’t scrap the five-week wait is simply that…
They don’t want to?
I’ve already explained that the five-week wait, for people who are already desperate for cash, means claimants are likely to have to request an advance loan (the Tories are refusing to change them into grants). Paying back these loans will plunge them further into debt in the long run.
The coronavirus – and the lockdown that the Tories have imposed – mean that many people have lost their source of income and are looking to the Tories to help them.
Instead – it’s worse than letting them down – the Tories are actively harming them.
Source: DWP ‘didn’t really consider’ scrapping the five-week wait for Universal Credit – Welfare Weekly
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Whot a load of crap of dwp. RTU IDs baby isn’t working still how many billions wasted on it when it could have been used to pay the benefits with billions over how quaint is he hmmm he culled the stock through benefits denial did he
Universal Credit is unfit for purpose. Iain Duncan Smith is a deluded maniac. Lord Freud seems to have quietly retired. The Tories are rich and don’t care. Starmer says it would be inappropriate to introduce Basic Income, but doesn’t say why. If Starmer ever gets elected will he scrap Universal Credit? I doubt it. None of the Westminster elite give a monkey’s toss about Social Security, or about those who rely upon it.