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Universal credit on the way to recovery???

Daphne
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Interesting report from the Institute for Government - ‘an independent charity working to increase government effectiveness’ - called Universal credit: From disaster to recovery.

Chapter 11 - Is UC what it was? - and Chapter 12 - What remains to be done? - have some interesting points, and Chapter 13 gives a diagnosis of what went wrong and what went right.

Andrew Dutton
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http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/welfare-rights/news/item/universal-credit-needs-a-reboot-to-help-solve-poverty-in-the-uk-says-jrf

No, it needs ‘The Boot’.

The IoG report is interesting, but it recounts an appalling catalogue of disasters and I don’t see much ‘recovery’.

Slipping timetable, aggressive ministerial bragging accompanied by denial of failure and insults offered even to the mildest of critics, all of these have set the tone over the last few years.

DWP can’t even tell us how people can claim CJSA and CESA under gateway UC: how is a more complex scheme going to work?

Recovery? Pshaw!

[ Edited: 6 Sep 2016 at 04:19 pm by Andrew Dutton ]
Peter Turville
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UC - the Humpty Dumpty benefit

“..................................................................... can’t cut and paste all the old means tested benefits back together again”

Daphne
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Rehousing Advice.
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On UC timescales…..and ww2…..

“It would be easy to argue that eight or nine years is longer than it took to win the Second World War – as Margaret Thatcher once did when told it might take six years to get a decent costing system across the NHS.289 But that sort of war – with a nation’s survival at stake –allows even a democratic government that is supported by its population to commandeer and order in a way that is simply not possible with a major benefit change affecting millions of people in a peacetime democracy that has many more ways of communicating with government than in 1940.”

On legitimate speculation, the causes of ill health, and worse…. (ahem).... things you shouldn’t plan for .....

“Fourth, there was an element of sheer bad luck. Two of the project’s senior responsible owners retired through ill-health, although one can legitimately ask, certainly in one case, whether the load that they were being asked to carry in fact contributed to that. One died in harness. With the best will in the world, it is difficult to plan for that.”

[ Edited: 7 Sep 2016 at 01:41 pm by Rehousing Advice. ]
Andrew Dutton
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‘A DWP spokesman said: “It’s misleading to draw wider conclusions from the anecdotal evidence of a small number of people.

“The reality is people claiming universal credit are moving into work faster and staying in work longer than under the previous system. We are rolling out the UC service to all types of benefit claimants in a safe and controlled way so we can ensure it is working effectively for everyone.”’

Note the catch-phrase ‘the reality is’ , copyrighted by Mr Duncan Smith and employed ad nauseam to cover up all sorts of unreality, remains as standard language, followed by the same-old-same old undeviating, self-deluding DWP line. These people have learned nothing, and will just keep on dismissing criticism out of hand.

And as for the stuff about ‘anecdotal evidence’ - the DWP’s claims of success have so far not even been anecdotal, they have simply been made up.

“Leave the misleading to us,” said the spokesman,“we’ve got no time for amateurs.”

 

Stuart
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Letter from Damian Green to the Work and Pensions Committee published today (but dated 2 August) includes reference to the spending estimates for UC - and the enormity of what’s left to do…

’We estimate that, by the end of rollout, we will be spending £60 billion on universal credit. Expenditure at March 2017, as set out in the estimate, is £274 million.’

http://rightsnet.org.uk/pdfs/Letter_to_WP_Committee_Chair_from_Rt_Hon__Damian_Green_Welfare_Gap_Aug_2016.pdf

[ Edited: 7 Sep 2016 at 04:36 pm by Stuart ]
hbinfopeter
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The report is actually quite a good read. The best I have read on UC by miles. Any report that includes lines such as “the original timetable was just nuts” is well worth a look!

It also makes the point that “recovery does not mean recovered” i.e. that the system is really just starting and that the DWP are just at first base but at least they now know the direction they need to progress in. 

“What remains to do done? An awful lot is the answer”. I think we can all agree on that.

Daphne
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I agree on it being a good read - haven’t read it all yet but there are definitely some interesting insights into the infighting that went on…

Benny Fitzpatrick
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Daphne - 08 September 2016 09:24 AM

I agree on it being a good read - haven’t read it all yet but there are definitely some interesting insights into the infighting that went on…

Therein lies the rub. The important players are more concerned with fighting their corners than in the success of the project or the outcome for claimants. Hence the refusal to admit mistakes, acknowledge problems etc, as no-one wants to admit weakness or accept accountability for failures.

Maybe it’s the DWP mindset which needs a reboot?

Peter Turville
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Daphne - 08 September 2016 09:24 AM

I agree on it being a good read - haven’t read it all yet but there are definitely some interesting insights into the infighting that went on…

Just the same as the ‘turf wars’ within / between central govt and local authorities on the intro of IS and current HB scheme. DWP & HMRC for TCs and CHB etc. It must be a golden rule of Westminster / Whitehall never to introduce reform in a way that is the most logical or administratively practicle.

Paul_Treloar_AgeUK
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Very well-written account with sections needing reading through your fingers, so terrifying are they.

One of the very worst sections for me is this:

But Iain did a bargain – the DLA cuts for Universal Credit – which handed us yet another big change programme to go alongside Universal Credit’

Other cuts followed, which were there to reduce the deficit but also to help fund Universal Credit in advance. By the time of the full Spending Review in October 2010, the Treasury’s ‘red book’ disclosed that £7bn of the welfare cuts were there ‘to provide a fair and affordable platform for the introduction of the Universal Credit’.

IDS bargained on UC and in doing so, allowed Osborne and the Treasury to reek havoc on the rest of the social security system, as well as eventually UC itself. It’s really sad to read about Terry Moran experiencing a breakdown as a result of the pressures placed upon him. And the rivalry between MP’s, civil servants and government departments is almost farcical, if it wasn’t so serious.

nevip
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I read the whole document.  The interesting thing for me is that how in work condionality is part of the political bedrock of a single benefit as currently constituted.  And of course, the higher you set the taper then the more necessary it becomes in order to achieve its political aims.

[ Edited: 8 Sep 2016 at 07:48 pm by nevip ]
Benny Fitzpatrick
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The “little people” must be made to work harder (under threat of penury), to support the elite in the style to which they aspire!

SarahJBatty
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Just finished reading the report. It is a fascinating insight and very well written.

What it highlights especially well is how a politically neutral idea to simplify the benefit system and ‘make sure people are better off in work’  interacted with a moral agenda to ‘make people work’, which interacted with two political agendas - an unrealistic drive to deliver a massive change within one parliament, and a treasury driven austerity agenda with little concern for detail.

How UC will interact with the labour market is still unknown which it highlights. It fails to acknowledge the seriousness of the mess that UC is making for recipients, but I guess that is not the role of this report.  When I read about displacement of costs onto social landlords and LAs I want to scream “what about the costs to claimants..?”

The revelation that the £1bn DLA cut was a deal to keep UC on the table is utterly sickening when you think of the impact on those DLA claimants losing out under PIP, especially those severely disabled people losing HR Mob and their cars.

This statement stands out for me:

‘A paradox of UC remains that in seeking to drive people into higher earnings and more independence from the benefit system, there will be more intrusion into and control over the lives of people who are in work than under the current benefit system’

Benny Fitzpatrick
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I think the idea of increased control over people’s lives was deliberately built in to UC, in that to accept state aid, one must comply with pre-conditions. (How ever unreasonable they may be).

Jon (CANY)
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Interesting to see it spelled out that when UC was initially more generous to claimnants than are legacy benefits, the Treasury was happy that the roll-out was being delayed; but once cuts were in place to make UC less generous than tax credits, then everyone in government was behind it, and UC’s safe future was assured.

I was also curious about this aspect, which I had been unaware of:

Admirably and unusually, the legislation allows for much experimentation within that framework. Would a more generous taper significantly affect behaviour or not? Would bigger work allowances help? Would significantly changing the child care element make a big difference? Would doing more to incentivise second earners have a bigger overall impact than simply getting inactive people to do at least a few hours’ work a week? All these and more, if and when Universal Credit is up and running at scale, can be tried locally against a set of controls elsewhere.

Local variation of the rules to experiment on claimants in order to optimise the system seems like a new thing.

[ Edited: 24 Sep 2016 at 08:26 pm by Jon (CANY) ]
Rehousing Advice.
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Lord Freud…..final statement…........

It reads a bit…. ahem… Orwellian…..didnt it? Maybe it is just me…......

“We can tag people and watch what happens when we do something with them. This will take decades. In the end it will be a combination of financial incentives and conditionality, which one will need to optimise.”

[ Edited: 30 Dec 2016 at 03:33 pm by Rehousing Advice. ]