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After eight years of difficulty and controversy ...
Universal credit may well be about to move into an even more fraught phase, says outgoing chair of the SSAC -
If ministers do not heed the lessons of the past few years, the migration process, he reckons, could trigger more strife ...
“The chances of bringing it off successfully, and getting 100% compliance are ... well, let’s just call it very challenging. You are calling for a massive shift of behaviour and compliance in people who just haven’t been used to this.”
I’ve always found the repeated use of the word ‘compliance’ in the context of UC reform as being deeply unsettling. The most generous way I can look at it is has become on of these DWP buzzwords that has lost meaning through misuse. The less generous viewpoint is that it speaks volumes on the mindsets of those responsible for introducing UC and their opinions on claimants.
[ Edited: 7 Aug 2018 at 04:48 pm by SamW ]‘If ministers do not heed the lessons of the past few years, the migration process, he reckons, could trigger more strife.’
Errrr……yes.
‘The current universal support arrangements may not be enough. “My sense is that the jury is still out on whether that is satisfactorily in place, sufficient and effective in different parts of the country.’
Errrr…..yes.
“I think it is the right broad direction of travel. Frankly, if it needs to take a bit longer, beyond 2023, is that the end of the world? No, I don’t think it is. The important thing is to get to a point where it is working.”
Disagree. I don’t think it is the correct ‘direction of travel’ and never was because it relies too much on force and on treating all claimants as workshy. Not to mention the glaring gaps in the treatment of people with disabilities. As for the timetable…..
‘[The] design and implementation too often failed to take into account the varied lives and complex needs of claimants.’
See above.
“mistaken sense of self-sufficiency”
Understatement of the year.
‘Senior DWP officials, he noted, had been striving in recent years to encourage staff to “speak truth to power”, he says. “Clearly, they haven’t been wholly successful. There is a cultural problem they need to tackle.”
This is how many years after ‘optimism bias’ was criticised?
Projected DWP response:
‘We very much welcome the fact that Paul agrees completely with the aims of UC and says that it should continue to transform people’s lives and that it doesn’t matter that it will take a few more years than we said since the last time it took a few more years than we said.
As for his criticisms, they are ill-informed and out of date and in any case there is a squirrel over there, look.”
Squirrels. Ace!