To wonder if there is a Universal Credit tsunami round the corner?

[ArsenicSoup]

I'm sure it was announced at Tory conference that the switch-over was being brought forward to February.

Now I can't find reference to it anywhere. Which is odd. Have they quietly dropped the idea? Or are they scarambling to be (half) ready in time?

The local CAB are advertising for volunteer advisers. I qualified nearly ten years ago while a SAHM and worked paid and unpaid in that area for a while. Work is slow (generally, so I have some spare time) and I can't sleep (tonight) and it's annoying me - are the CAB gearing up for chaos? Do they need the help? Is the coalition really going to push this through?

im single female late 50s work 15 hours a week no dependant children at home rent privately, ive just done the free online calculator and according to this if its accurate i will be £200 a month better off when UC comes into force

Don't know current state of play re disability benefits, so DON'T PANIC, this may not have gone in.

But in the early plans for UC, disabled people would indeed have to work. The JobCentre clerk would decide that each disabled person was capable of earning X theoretical amount, and their UC would be reduced by that every week.

This was regardless of whether they actually DID earn that, or whether they had a job, etc.

Also, it was by amount of earnings, not amount of work. So two people with the same level of the same disability would be set the same earnings target, eg £40/wk. If one was a former accountant and the other a former manual worker, their ability to acquire £40 would be completely different.

It's completely bonkers, and bears no relationship to supporting disabled people according to their needs. I hope that particular piece of madness didn't make the cut, as it would very predictably cause large numbers of suicides.

Like I say, I don't know that that is still planned - and if UC falls over because of the IT then that will save us anyway. But it's worth mentioning to show the depths of their insanity. A lot of this is coming from David Freud, the investment banker behind the restructuring and cuts to disability benefits.

I can just see the substance misusers I work with coping with UC...not.

Other things that will change on the disability front: the purpose of PIP replacing DLA is to cut the number of claims by 20%.

I shan't try at this time of night to dig up the Hansard reference for Maria Miller stating this in Parliament.

It does this by changing the criteria. Eg, for DLA you were considered to have mobility needs if you couldn't walk 50m safely and with reasonable repetition; under PIP, that will be 20m.

.

Did some stiff lobbying not get the maddest bits dropped Pausing?

I'm so

Perhaps that's the idea...

I profoundly hope so.

To be perfectly honest, I've stopped following it because I feel sick every time I read these things. That's really why I'm not looking up the Hansard reference - cowardice, and the fact I won't sleep afterwards.

When I was following this stuff, and trying to post on MN about it and reference all my links so people could get it from the horse's mouth, I was crying every day. I don't have much of a life, and fighting, fighting fighting all the time took away the tiny bit I had.

Hope that it's been dropped, that is.

Oh Pausing

You've raised a lot of awareness.

TBH, the worse the design of the system, the more misplaced chutzpah, the bigger the rush, the more likely the whole thing is to implode, which would be the best outcome.

Yes yes, I'm praying for IT implosion.

This thread has heartened me greatly.

I bet there isn't a set prayer for IT implosion

They're forcing it through before the next election because the next party in charge will scrap it - and they know it

Why? All parties likely to be in government support UC. After all, the basic idea is that people should benefit from working. The rate at which benefits are withdrawn under the current system means that many people on benefits are little or no better off if they get a job. Labour may attack the implementation but they are (currently) fully behind the principle (except, of course, for the so called bedroom tax which is unpopular and has been very poorly thought out).

The principle got left behind a very very long time ago prh (about the time IDS first picked the matter as his project). One of the early key points was the withdrawal rate or 'effective tax rate' at which people lose benefit support when they re-enter or increase work.

The original underpinning idea was that the taper must be shallow to 'make work pay' as the popular slogan goes. But the gradient of the taper was sharply increased a long time ago. The whole exercise is meaningless now, in those terms. It's just more punitive welfare slashing.

There is a lot of political disingenuity at play.

Yes, there was a nice article about that some time ago, Arsenic.

If you set the taper steep, you can't deliver your political soundbite of "making work pay".

If you set it shallow, you can't deliver your soundbite of "only helping those most in need."

You can't have both at once. Whichever you chose, the Daily Mail press can pull out a posterchild of you failing to meet the other. And since "Broken Britain" sells papers regardless of the detail, just like "Causes/Cures Cancer", that's exactly what they'll do.

I'm not sure when it is begining in our area but I have a friend who is making herself ill with worry about it.
She is a single parent who is unemployed and in receipt of benefits.
She struggles to get by with what she currently receives and has resorted to selling her posesions on eBay just to make a little extra money.
She did a UC calculation and worked out that she would be receiving over £200 less per month, she queried it at the job centre and they told her it would be more than £250 less.

She has no idea how she will survive.

I don't really understand they system but I can't understand how they can cut the money of families like that.

The main withdrawal rate for UC is 65%. As far as I can see it has always been at this level. This is shallower than the 100% withdrawal rate for some existing benefits such as income support. It is, however, slightly steeper than the withdrawal rate for tax credits giving an effective marginal tax rate of 76.2% as against 73% for tax credits. According to independent analysis the number of individuals seeing a participation tax rate of more than 70% will fall by 1.1M but the number seeing a participation tax rate of more than 60% will rise by 350,000. As a result the analysis says it will strengthen the incentive to work overall but it will weaken the incentive for potential second earners in couples. I don't know whether or not this is correct.

There will, of course, be winners and losers as with any change to the system. An independent analysis suggests that 2.5M families will gain, 1.4M families will lose and 2.5M families will see no change. I don't know if this analysis is correct.

It is true that lone parents and second earners in a couple with children may find that they will lose out if they work more than 29 hours per week as they start paying income tax, UC reduces and they face additional childcare costs.

WeAre that doesn't sound correct at all unless she has more than one dc who receives middle or low rate dla. Although even then there would be transitional protection.

As far as I can see it has always been at this level.

Not in the original conception, that was the entire point. IDS clearly had a pretty good grasp of the issues when he took the area of welfare policy on. He sounded almost evangelical at first and went on a lot of fact finding missions to places you wouldn't expect a Tory to go.

pausing yes, I feel sick when I read up on UC. Totally LP working p/t here. The thought of being forced to work f/t when my kids are teens, and most in need of my support and potentially vulnerable, makes my blood run cold. I want them packed off to uni, then I can safely work f/t again.

Previous detective work told me we'd be a bit worse off under UC too.

The thought of being forced to work f/t when my kids are teens, and most in need of my support and potentially vulnerable, makes my blood run cold. I want them packed off to uni, then I can safely work f/t again.
Unless your dc are SN is there a reason that you can't work Ft once they are teens/ They would be perfectly capable of getting themselves to school and back again then looking after themselves for a couple of hours till you got home.
Why do you have to wait till they've left home??

adsy

Posters don't have to go into detail as to why their situations are the way they are. If she could work full time, I'm sure she would, like everyone else. No-one has to justify why they can't work, full time/part time/ or at all. It's no-one elses business but theirs.

I'm sure there is a vaild reason for her not wanting to leave the kids on their own in the house.

Several months back there was a report on Channel 4 news that more children were being taken into care. I cant remember what reason the news report gave but i remember DH saying........."Bollocks Some of it is down to poverty"

Darkest

It is a sad day when dc are taken into care because of poverty.
I do hope their were other issues that were the reason for this.
It scares me that not so long ago in our history this was commonplace, heaven forbid we should go there again