Asked to review a Citizens’s Advice Bureau (CAB) report on how Universal Credit will affect disabled people, I did not expect to find it encouraging. But what the report reveals was even worse than I feared. You can read the full review on the Think Tank Review website, but here is just a flavour of what Universal Credit will mean for some disabled people.
Asked to review a Citizens’s Advice Bureau (CAB) report on how Universal Credit will affect disabled people, I did not expect to find it encouraging. But what the report reveals was even worse than I feared. You can read the full review on the Think Tank Review website, but here is just a flavour of what Universal Credit will mean for some disabled people.
CAB reports that, “Under Universal Credit…the disabled child element is being cut to half of what it is in the current system”…”DWP estimate that around 100,000 disabled children will be affected by the reduction in support.”
Also, “There is a very significant reduction in the financial support for seriously ill or disabled people who live on their own or just with dependent children and don’t have a carer.”
Over the past few years, sick and disabled people and carers have been heavily targeted for cuts, and for them, as for many others, welfare reform has been nothing short of a disaster. Often when faced with criticisms Iain Duncan Smith and his colleagues play the Universal Credit card, as if it were their trump card. Ah yes, they say, all these problems are occurring now because we are working under the bad old system of lots of different benefits. Under Universal Credit, the system will be simpler, fairer, and “will make work pay”.
But CAB has crunched the numbers, and has found that for many disabled people and carers, working and non-working, this will simply not be the case. They will actually find themselves worse off than they are now, and more will be tipped into poverty.
Since the idea of Universal Credit was first mooted, there has been something of a political consensus, with all three main parties broadly agreeing with it in principle. It is easy to see how a simpler, more streamlined system seems attractive.
But of course, it all depends on how such a system is designed, and the ideology and spirit behind it. In recent years, the behaviour of the Department for Work and Pensions towards sick and disabled people, particularly those unable to work, has been relentlessly negative, suspicious, and disrespectful. It is hardly surprising then that Universal Credit simply carries this forward, and once again hits some of the most disadvantaged people in society.
With Universal Credit beset by delays, cost overruns and IT problems, the Labour Party established a ‘rescue committee’ to look at how the project could be salvaged if they gain power at the next election. Unfortunately, it seems to have looked only at technical fixes to make the system work, not questioned the financial calculations or the impact it will have on people’s lives. In the event of winning an election they also propose a three month pause to review the project.
One can only hope that whoever wins the next election, they will take on board this CAB report and make substantial changes to Universal Credit, or it will be abandoned altogether. If not, disabled people will suffer yet more at the hands of government.
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© Bernadette Meaden has written about political, religious and social issues for some years, and is strongly influenced by Christian Socialism, liberation theology and the Catholic Worker movement. She is an Ekklesia associate and regular contributor. You can follow her on Twitter: @BernaMeaden