Universal Challenge: Making a success of Universal Credit.
Read report and recommendations
The government's flagship benefit reform has "serious design flaws" and has "veered off track" because of cost-cutting, a think tank has warned.
The Resolution Foundation said Universal Credit could leave 2.5 million families worse off, some by more than £3,000 a year.
It said recent changes, "which have been driven by the government's desire to secure further savings in the welfare budget... have taken it too far from its original purpose".
Unless design flaws are eradicated, it said, Universal Credit "risks being reduced to little more than a very complicated vehicle for cutting the benefits bill".
The report’s three recommendations are:
- Ensure that the incentives UC creates are focused on those most likely to respond and in most need of support;
- Embrace the challenge of tackling low pay and progression;
- Take the chance to reassess the way in which the UC system itself functions and the processes people must go through when making their claim.
The report in relation to disability
The report challenges the need for the Government to concentrate on tackling ‘worklessness’ (ensuring that at least one person in a household works) as a key stated aim of UC because this has ceased to be the problem it once was.
Instead the report states that, if the government wants to make further inroads in tackling wordlessness, it must focus its attention on those furthest from the labour market, such as disabled households.
This will require a different approach, one that potentially goes beyond what UC can hope to achieve.
An earlier Resolution Foundation report - The road to full employment: what the journey looks like and how to make progress - recommended that the government include in its forthcoming disability employment White Paper a comprehensive strategy not just for boosting employment entry but for minimising employment exit connected to disability and ill-health. In 2014-15 1.8 million 18-69 year olds were unemployed compared to 10.8 million who were economically inactive. One fifth of these were sick or disabled.
A forthcoming Resolution Foundation report will focus on ways to help disabled people to remain in touch with the labour market.