Further punitive restrictions on Universal Credit are on the way.
Further punitive restrictions on Universal Credit are on the way
The latest development of Ian Duncan Smith’s Universal Credit scheme will soon mean that people made unemployed will have to wait at least five weeks before getting any financial support.
At present it’s two weeks; still a long time to wait when you have bills to pay and mouths to feed.
Some of this is administrative delay, but with the new five week wait it will be a deliberate strategy to force people into immediate work or push them into penury – the latter being more likely in an economy where jobs increasingly can’t actually fund even basic necessities like housing and energy costs.
That’s why the TUC have launched a campaign to ‘Stop the Five Week Wait’ as part of their Saving Our Safety Net project, launching a petition against IDS’ impoverishment strategy.
It poses a very clear question: how long could you go without any income? Even for those in work, many have to scrape together money from friends and family at the end of the month in what some call ‘scrounge week’. Imagine that week becoming five.
Why so long? A whole calendar month will be spent ‘assessing’ the amount of benefit you’ll be able to receive. Then you’ll have to wait a week for the DWP to actually arrange your payment.
But you’ll also have a week-long period when you will be unable to even apply for Universal Credit. The government is deciding whether this will be during the assessment period or beforehand, meaning potentially sixweeks in assessment, admin and spiteful restrictions.
And this from a government that supposedly hates bureaucracy and red tape.
There will be some emergency support available. But the rules on who can claim it will be so strict that very few able to claim Universal Credit will be eligible. Richard Exell at the TUC writes that “one reason for being turned down, for instance, will be that your family has debts that might make it hard for you to repay the advance.” Unbelievable.
The public are against it, understandably – by 70 per cent to 18 per cent when told about the policy. Even the vast majority of UKIP and Conservative voters oppose the wait.
But there’s a problem: just 13 per cent have actually heard of it. We need, therefore, to spread the word fast if there’s to be any chance of stopping this disastrous scheme going under wraps.
The policy can be summarised quite simply: the state safety net being outsourced to food banks and payday loan sharks. This is a government hand-out to Wonga and co, while returning to the Victorian welfare state of unreliable charity. TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady has branded it ‘cruel and vindictive’.
It comes in next April – just a month before the General Election. With a strong enough campaign, it can be halted or pushed beyond that date. So there is an opportunity for the opposition to succeed. Millions of people who might be made redundant over the coming years are relying on that outcome.
You can read the TUC’s report on the five week wait, Universal Credit: Solving the problem of delay in benefit payments, here.
18 Responses to “Could you go five weeks without money? Under a new DWP plan you might have to”
IDS' biggest fan
This is the most ludicrous plan I have ever come across. It reminds me of the punishment
enlisted from Victorian era where the poor were thrown in jails because they were homeless. IDS, has the mentality of the Victorian workhouse owner – work them till they drop. I think in order to prove the thinking, that IDS should himself live without an income or bank account, in rented accommodation to witness and understand the issues of poverty. This man and his ideas go beyond the pales of cost effectiveness, they are cruel and unnecessary. Claw back money from the likes of Vodafone,Starbucks, o2, and your paymaster Philip Green, Mr Duncan-Smith, that surely is fairer and more balanced method of raising money in a civilized society!
littleoddsandpieces
It takes about a month to starve to death, probably quicker for a man with muscle tone or a lady grown rounded by the cheap food that is just bulk.
With the rise in retirement age from 2013, and worse to come with the Flat Rate Pension in 2016 (to women born from 1953 and men born from 1951)
leaving a great many women, and a lot of the poorest men with nil food money for life, pensioner starvation will also increase:
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/state-pension-at-60-now
So this is starvation by design that was the New Poor Law of the Victorian era enacted by the Tories and Liberals (now called Lib Dems), bearing in mind without benefit you cannot access food vouchers to a food bank.
But a food bank is only 3 vouchers in a year, even on benefit.
Foreign news services tell that starvation has increased around 70 per cent since 2010.
And doctors through their medical journal, The Lancet, have been saying that there has been a big increase in malnutrition admissions to NHS hospitals.
The government gives subsidy for surplus food to go to
landfill / profit-making private companies generating energy from waste,
not to Fareshare, the supplier of food banks.
http://theswansnewparty.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/government-uses-taxpayers-money-to-deny.html
The Greens came up with a solution in their 2015 general election manifesto:
– universal non-means tested (unconditional) Citizen Income,
to cover basic needs, non-withdrawable, in or out of work.
And the socialists back in 1997 offered:
– state pension at 55 to men and women at £320 per week
– 50 per cent increase for current receivers of state pension and pensioner benefits.
These manifesto pledges together would end starvation for all for good.
The Greens, socialists, Labour Left think tank within Labour –
if these allk merged to become a mass party and offered these manifesto pledges,
would win a landslide victory in 2015
and form a majority government,
that would make it all but impossible for Tory opposition to a just and fair society.
Anybody?
Bob Digi
Hey Ids’ biggest fan it was not just Victorian times they threw the poor in jail.They put the homeless in jails when the London Olympics were on,I think Herr IDS is trying to break the unemployed and see how far they can take it.
Over in Ireland they take care of the unemployed properly they get double the amount of money per week that the English get and they don’t even hassle you because they know the job prospects are totally bleak but at least they give you enough money to live on.
jeffrey davies
hammers hammers hammers i shout out to those coming out of their local jcp hamers free if sanctioned break a window free board and lodge no bills to pay no rent no council tax hammers hammers free to those who are sanctioned welcome to tory britain were being out of work sick disabled mentaly ill will get you that robust filling out of reports targeting you with their abuse rtu ids way dont look for that help from cab hass greyling took that right also hammers hammers for those who want free board and lodge jeff3
Adc
‘work them till they drop’
I think it is more ‘drop them till they work.’