Escalation of Universal Credit rollout in UK threatens millions more with poverty
By
Robert Stevens
4 November 2017
In the days since the Universal Credit (UC) welfare benefit was rolled out more broadly, many people have been plunged into severe poverty.
Beginning last month Universal Credit, the Conservative government’s cover scheme for slashing welfare, was introduced to a further 45 job centres across the country. Each month about another 50 will be added. UC was first introduced in 2010, with about five job centres a month bringing it in at that stage.
Universal Credit is a benefit payment system for working-age people that merges all entitlements into one payment. The benefits replaced are income support, income-based jobseeker’s allowance, income-related employment and support allowance, housing benefit, child tax credit and working tax credit. As of October, 610,000 people received receive universal credit, with more than a third of these in employment.
According to an Institute for Fiscal Studies report, Universal Credit will cost 2 million in-work families £1,600 a year and more than 1 million out-of-work families £2,300 a year. Research by the Child Poverty Action Group found that single parents and families with three children faced losing an average £200 a month.
Huge cuts in the value of the benefit have already been imposed. In 2016, cuts to UC were implemented for some 80,000 households. By 2020, UC cuts will be extended to 1 million households across the UK, saving the government £3 billion a year. This is part of the government’s commitment to imposing £12 billion in welfare cuts, as part of its ongoing austerity programme, by 2020.
The UC cuts, first announced in 2015, lower the amount people can earn before low-wage subsidies are reduced. The…