The Universal Credit

[Xenia]

Well done Iain Duncan-Smith.

1. Anyone in work will be better off than anyone not.
2. More benefits can be retained despite starting work
3. Housing benefit, income support incapacity benefit of dozens of other payments all scrapped and replaced with one simple universal credit.

This is reported in the Times. No treasury comment.

Very good news.

ahh that's different - I tell you what - I bet I had a face like a slapped arse when she told me actually in reality you'll be worse off

I was bloody ecstatic and planning my round the world cruise (ok week at Butlins) when the computer spouted off £100 a week.........

" so I can only suspect that people who experience delays don't have all their paperwork in order ?"

Not true. I had an absolute nightmare. One of the times I lost a job, I was back in work before they paid me JSA. I was eating 1 slice of bread a day at that point in order to afford job interviews.

And the worst part is that I'd got all my paperwork ready before my job ended as I knew what they were like.

ssd your children have two parents so your childcare presumably costs you £3 not £6 an hour and their father pays the other half. Therefore you keep half what you earn. Or are you in a sexist relationship?

Could you get a job at higher than the minimum wage once you've had some years experience at what you do?

The problem people have in taking temporary work and their benefits stopping and then having to get signed back on again was an issue people often talked about at a charity I worked at. We had a lot of volunteers who were out of work but genuinely looking and the stories they told are exactly as kaloki says.

That is one of the reasons a proper Universal Benefit would be a good thing in my view. If it came as of right and the recipient knew it would never stop then even taking a temporary job on minimum wage even for a few days would always be an a attractive option providing it covered costs and taxes and left a reasonable amount of surplus.

Xenia - living on benefits as they are currently structured is far far harder than you imagine. While I agree with much of what you are saying it is the small practical details that in practce make it incredibly difficult for some people to get off them. There are people who have no intention of getting off benefits but many people are trapped.

I agree and there are no jobs to be had in some places.

The Sunday Times has more on these changes today. The aim is to make work pay even if you work over 16 hours a week and those who won't work would be enroled on big work programme and officers go to their homes and get them up if they fail to turn up (US type of workfare) and more making absent fathers pay.

"more making absent fathers pay"

chance will be a fine thing - they are absolutely hopeless at doing that. Although they did offer to get exH to pay me the arrears he owed me after we knew we were already back together (for a short period last year).

"the aim is to make work pay even if you work over 16hrs a week"

but it already does for most people - or do you mean under 16hrs a week. As if it was under 16hrs a week that would be fab.

Agree entirely with BB's last post

Some quick calculations....

21% of the population are under 16.

So out of 100 people 79 are over 16 and would get the universal benefit.

15% of people are over 65, so out of 100 that's 15 and that leaves 64 people out of 100 as being of working age.

Out of those 64 1 in 5 are economically inactive, let's call that 13.

So 51 people out of 100 are of working age and actually working, and they have to pay the tax to fund the Universal Benefit for 79 people. Each tax payer funds 1.5 people, including themselves.

So for the Universal Benefit alone they're going to have to pay £15k in tax.

It's been proposed that tax is 50% and starts at £20k. So for someone to pay £15k in tax they would need to have a taxable income of £30k. So a total salary of £50k.

The average salary in the UK is £25k.

Even if you introduced the tax at 50% from £10k people would still need a salary of £40k to make this work so still far above the average.

Do you see now why it just wouldn't work?

And yes the Government does have other sources of income beyond personal taxation. But spending on benefits is about 50% of the spending while tax and NI is about 50% of the income. So it is pretty safe to say that taxation and benefits should be about equal.

Under this proposed system there's an absolutely massive shortfall. And I haven't even factored into the equation the cost of making the system run.

I really do fail to see how this would work....

I think what you're assuming in your calculations is that the single payment applies for a lifetime at the same level, regardless of income. I also think it is unsafe to assume £15k/p.a. One of the stated aims is to take people out of long-term dependence on unemployment benefits and back into the habit of working. (Not disability payments, I hasten to add - different issue entirely) So there has to be some kind of time-related/income-related sliding scale that eventually kicks in. My understanding that it is not 'no strings attached'

Set-up costs would be high but administration costs should go down massively over time if there is just one payment to be sorted out.

IDS is not proposing a universal credit for all. He's proposing one benefit instead of 1001 or whatever we have now so that alone is a great simplication.

Secondly it will be paid only to benefit claimants.

Thirdly they intendt o taper it better to there is no disincentive to pick up bit of work here and there and on and off presumably.

'The state owes no one anything they powe me becuase f the many years we [paid NI to cover it; had we not paid NI and been able so save it then they wouldn;t. Hd we chosen it then perhaps we shouldn;t qualify for the insurance. But as the car insurance company owes me if my car is written off, so the state owes me living costs ijn this situation.

Although if they can amend student childcare to cover nanny costs I will be back completing training by September.

As for sisters etc- erm, my sisters are married as well, have kids and jobs etc- why is it their responsibility? Can't move becuase of the SN provision. Mum already has my sister's 3 kids, she couldn;t manage mine as well. DH's dad still working (as is mine) beyong reitement.

Where are these avenues?

And i;d gladly take in other people's kids for a reciprocal arrnagement but be honest, would you send your kids soemwhere where they would be guaranteed to come back bruised? Though not.

The narrow ideas might work for a narrow range but this is asociety where people have been encouraged to get mobile to source work, older people and women are able to work so not stay at home and babysit... that will have trade offs for sure.

Oh and if disability payments are unaffected I would like to know if anyone knows:

what happens to Carer's Allowance? it's a low payment, paid without being menas tested on family income: if you care for someone getting DLA for more than X hours a week, work under X hours and earn then it's supposed to be compendsation for your loss in earnings. Do all carers married to someone earning now lose this? Where's their motivation to carry on nd not just hand responsibiltiy to state going to come from then?

And HB- ATM low paid earners get this- it's the only benefit we get apart from disability ones and tc's. How will it work then if you're only entitled to the HB? Would you just get a proportion or what? And if like us you have amde a conscious decision not to claim part- for us council tax credit- will it actually be impossible to claim only a part if it's one? In which case we'd be costing the state and extra £110 pcm that we currently voluntarily pay in.

Under that, if there's only the one then we'd potentially be up on what we claim- which we don;t need: we're trotting along at that level where we ask the minimum of what we need to get by. Interesting.

'The aim is to make work pay even if you work over 16 hours a week and those who won't work would be enroled on big work programme and officers go to their homes and get them up if they fail to turn up (US type of workfare) and more making absent fathers pay.

Ah OK, well i'd be exempt from that I understand so maybe it's actually going to be carer aware? As it happens i;d happily do some workfare in the day, becuase I am bored. really, earth weepingly bored. I'm even having to do my MA as an independent student this year as we couldn;t get childcare. Can't even seem to find voluntary work that's flexible enough for appointments etc!

Hmmm.

I'm not sirectly opposed to this but I wish when they rel;eased details they didn't do it by stealth becuase there are always people who genuinely have no choice and it's quite tortuous (as a control freak where my family's welfare is concerned) not knowing teh details. Whereas if they said ' this is what we are doing and how ' we could sit down and try to find solutions: I am big on solutions. Uncertainty is a cruelty.

WRT to the suggestion about NHS and severely disabled people, the NHS is a health organisation: lots of people with SN have very little actual health needs- DS3 has minimal involvement (currently awaiting EEG results for ds3 and seeing eating disorders bods for ds1) but also has a 3 minute attention span due to absences. He's unemployable. But has no real health needs. Long term, I see him utilising education and social service budgets rather than health. DS1 though- bright, ASD, attentive, will hit you if you move wrong way- prison budget. Sadly.

I don't think they have really released details of it yet but the press seems to have it

whomoved, I am blue in the face asking my neighbours and friends if we could share childcare and help me out a bit, have came to nothing as most friends have family offering free childcare that they don't have to reciprocate (and they take for granted but thats another thread!!) or they don't work at all and don't need childcare.

and xenia, no I'm not in a sexist relationship, I just don't want to work for nothing, my meagre wages pay bills and food, not manicures and spa breaks, every penny counts here and me working for £5.80 and paying £6 for childcare hourly just isn't a possibility.

I hope in the future to get more hours/better pay in another job, but after giving up my career when the kids were small as the childcare we had dried up, I'm in the unenviable position of not having a big job market out there who wants me.

No, which is the bit that annoys me tbh: I wish the press wuld recognise that OK it might scare a few sate-drains back into a Christmas job but it does scare those who are actually trying as well.

Especially as yesterday the Beeb were saying this will take until 2015 to fully implement and today DC said maybe within a year: It's 2 years until I satrt back and Dh qualifies and can work from home.

To me, that's a reasonable plan, but if all this in within a year it's too soon to change anything much.

. But spending on benefits is about 50% of the spending while tax and NI is about 50% of the income."

??? are you seriously suggesting that the government currently spends 50% of it's entire budget on benefits?????

I'm very sure, from the information available, that there is a deliberately distinct division between the disabled, carers and other people removed from the workforce due to injury, illness etc..... and 'the unemployed'. That seems to be something that is stressed at every turn.

The Universal Credit i.e 'one payment covering everything' would apply to the categories you mentioned and reflect circumstances and need. Hence the need for a wholesale reassessment of claimants. However, unlike people who are simply unemployed I would not expect there to be strings attached, time-limits applied etc.

xenia, I hope my last post didn't come across as being too snappy at you , I do appreciate your POV, its just that some of your suggestions are hard to actually live by in the real world.

Chil I really hope you are right. Unfortunately I do know (through mental health charities) that they are looking at changing the disability criteria to make it stricter in ways that will impact negatively on "invisible" illnesses. They are also talking about classing more people as fit for work, which, in an economy with few jobs to start off with, means that those who are disabled are not the top of the pile when employers are looking for staff. SO will move disabled people into the JSA category and impose time limits on them.

They've obviously introduced this new law against disability discrimination in a half hearted attempt to say that more disabled people can get work, despite the fact that most employers already know not to say why you haven't been offered a job in the first place.

Chil - the interesting thing is that those on IS aren't included as "seeking work" (or unemployed).

I may sit and browse the council website, and job centre plus (the latter generally takes 5 minutes) but as I'm on IS I'm not counted as seeking work - they're very clever manipulating their figures.

If a Universal Credit allowed people to pick up work here and there, take on jobs with less than 16hrs etc without being worse off (or potentially up shit creek without a paddle when the work finishes) then i think it could be a good thing.

@kaloki... the part about the disabled not being at the top of the pile could be improved by the recent changes to the equality legislation which now forbids potential employers to ask about past/present health issues when considering an applicant and also should help carers with responsibility for others being discriminated against int he work place.

@MaMoTTaT. I think a big part of the reassessment will actually see the 'seeking work' unemployed numbers going up in the short-term. For a nation that is generally enjoying longer life-spans and better health across the board, it's sticking out like a sore thumb that the numbers claiming invalidity benefit have risen disproportionately to what would be expected.

of course they'll go up too when they introduce the single parents going onto JSA as soon as their youngest starts school.

I think people shouldn't worry as it might be quite a while until it is in force. It is interesting that it's not on the front page of today's Telegraph but is on the Sunday Times. I think the Times had an interview with IDS But as I've been earning a crust most of the weekend I haven't had time to read most of the papers yet.

on the working at a loss it was worth it for us because we knew long term we'd earn more. If you're in a job where there are no prospects and nor would your experience stand you in good stead in the future to double your salary etc nor to strike out on your own as a cleaner or whatever job it might be then of course I accept there is not huge point except social interaction and mental health issues in working for less than you pay in childcare.

If anyone can sell some of the things I market they can have 10% of whatever I receive.