Universal Credit
The new policy was announced in 2010 at the Conservative Party annual conference by the Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, who said it would make the social security system fairer to claimants and taxpayers.
[20] The Resolution Foundation has argued that this cut, which will be felt more keenly as millions more people transfer to Universal Credit,[21] risks the new system failing to achieve its original purpose of incentivising work in low-income households.
[24][25] In April 2020, as a one-year temporary response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Universal Credit standard allowance was temporarily increased by £20 per week and housing benefit rent limits relaxed.
[38] Writing in 2013, Emma Norris of the Institute for Government argued the original timetable for implementation of Universal Credit was "hugely overambitious",[39] with delays due to IT problems and senior civil servants responsible for the policy changing six times.
[42] A pilot in four local authority areas was due to precede national launch of the scheme for new claimants (excluding more complex cases such as families with children), in October 2013, with full implementation to be completed by 2017.
[44] The roll-out of Universal Credit in the Northwest of England was limited to new, single, healthy claimants, later extended to couples, then families, in the same area, reflecting the gradual maturing of different aspects of the computer system.
Building on last year's improvements to universal credit, the government now needs to ensure deductions are made at a manageable rate and take a person's ability to cover their expenses into account."
"[45] The scheme was originally planned to begin in April 2013,[46] in four local authorities – Tameside (containing Ashton-under-Lyne), Oldham, Wigan and Warrington, with payments being handled by the DWP Bolton Benefit Centre – but was later reduced to a single area (Ashton) with the others due to join in July.
The pilot would initially cover only about 300 claims per month for the simplest cases of single people with no dependent children, and was to extend nationally for new claimants with the same circumstances by October, with a gradual transition to be complete by 2017.
[55][56] In July 2018 the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Damian Green, announced a further 12-month delay to the planned implementation completion date to allow additional contingency time, taking that to 2022.
"[63] Fields also said, "I wrote to the secretary of state about how the rollout of universal credit in Birkenhead is not going as well as we’re told in the House of Commons, with some women taking to the red light district for the first time.
[71] In January 2019, Amber Rudd, the Work and Pensions Secretary, suspended a planned vote on moving the three million established recipients of older benefits onto Universal Credit.
[74] On the same day, the High Court ruled that her department had "wrongly interpreted" regulations covering the calculation of Universal Credit payments in cases where working claimants' paydays fluctuated.
Four single mothers, with assistance from the Child Poverty Action Group,[81] took this issue for judicial review at the High Court, which in 2019 ruled the DWP had made a "perverse" and incorrect interpretation of the 2013 universal credit regulations.
[82] In June 2020 the DWP lost an appeal, where it was ruled that this was "one of the rare instances where the secretary of state for work and pensions’ refusal to put in place a solution to this very specific problem is so irrational that I have concluded that the threshold is met because no reasonable [minister] would have struck the balance in that way".
"[98] The National Audit Office maintains there is no evidence Universal Credit helps people into work and it is unlikely to provide value for money, the system is in many ways unwieldy and inefficient.
Major argued that people who faced losing out in the short term had to be protected, "or you run into the sort of problems the Conservative Party ran into with the poll tax in the late 1980s".
Neil Couling, the chief of the universal credit programme, "admitted that the government over the last 18 months has demanded a push to recover old debt and has provided UC with extra funds to do this".
[108] In 2025, the High Court similarly ruled paying social landlords directly without taking representations from the claimant, such as the money was withheld in dispute over repairs, was unfair and unlawful.
[115] Echoing these concerns, Ronnie Campbell, MP for Blyth Valley, sponsored an Early Day Motion[116] on 13 June 2011 on the delivery of Universal Credit which was signed by thirty MPs: "That this House notes that since only fifteen per cent of people in deprived areas have used a Government website in the last year, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) may find that more Universal Credit customers than expected will turn to face-to-face and telephone help from their local authority, DWP helplines, Government-funded welfare organisations, councillors and their Hon.
End Hunger UK, a coalition of poverty charities and faith organizations said payment delays, administrative mistakes and failure to support claimants having difficulties with the online only system forced up food bank use.
"[125][126] The High Court ruled in January 2019 that the DWP "wrongly interpreted" regulations covering the calculation of Universal Credit payments in cases where working claimants' paydays fluctuated.
The Child Poverty Action Group said the anomaly had caused "untold hardship, stress and misery" and forced one of the working single mothers in the case to rely on food banks, despite requiring fresh fruit and vegetables due to pregnancy.
[129] Rudd went on to explain that "We have made changes to accessing universal credit so that people can have advances, so that there is a legacy run-on after two weeks of housing benefit, and we believe that will help with food and security".
[citation needed] The Social Security Advisory Committee have argued that the policy of direct payments requires "close monitoring" so as to make sure Universal Credit does not further discourage landlords from renting to people on benefits.
Not only does UC's single household payment bear no relation to the world of work, it is out of step with modern life and turns back the clock on decades of hard-won equality for women."
"[141][142] The campaign group Women's Aid have argued that as Universal Credit benefits are paid as a single payment to the household, this has negative consequences for victims of domestic abuse.
[154] In December 2018, Liverpool Walton MP Dan Carden wrote to Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Amber Rudd, to raise concerns after a number of people claiming Universal Credit were told to apply for provisional driving licences as a form of ID, with the costs being taken from their benefits.
Criminals were found to be exploiting a loophole in the online system to fraudulently apply for universal credit and claiming advance loans on behalf of other people who were unaware that they had been signed up for the benefit.
[159] A study by The Lancet Public Health Journal released in February 2020 linked a sharp increase in mental-health problems among the unemployed with the rollout of Universal Credit and other government welfare changes.
