Iain Duncan Smith’s ambitions to reduce complexity in the benefits system, remove cliff edges, and incentivise employment are the right ones – it’s what people on benefit say they want themselves. So we should offer a tentative welcome to his new universal credit (UC), described in detail in a white paper published last week. Bringing together a number of benefits into a single payment will certainly simplify the system, which the government argues – probably correctly – should improve take-up. Changes to the tapers that withdraw benefits less sharply as incomes increase, and to earnings disregards to allow claimants to keep more of their income from work, are also to be welcomed, though care must be taken to ensure that so-called ‘mini-jobs’ genuinely offer a ladder to progress in employment and don’t trap people in a series of short-term, stop-go poor quality jobs which can’t lift them out of poverty. Nonetheless, the possibility of taking mini-jobs will be welcomed by many, including lone parents, enabling them to combine a few hours of paid work with their caring responsibilities.

Reducing the marginal deduction rate and removing the cliff edges in the current system are welcome steps forward in making work pay. And the proposal for real-time calculation of benefits is also good news, helping to avoid the rollercoaster of over- and under-payments that have been a feature of the tax credits system, if the IT can be made to work. Though problems with over-payments in tax credits have been at least partially tackled over the past few years, the system remains complex, with some claimants faced with demands for recovery of significant over-payments, often arising through no fault of their own.

But the UC comes with some substantial health warnings too. First, while it’s good that it will be both an in- and out-of-work benefit, which should simplify claiming and help to reduce stigma, this is not, despite the name, a universal payment – it’s a means-tested benefit, with the risks and disadvantages that means testing brings. The UC will moreover be assessed on a household rather than an individual basis, which is likely to disadvantage women who may receive less in their own right.

It’s important too to recognise that the way that some current benefits will be reflected in the UC structure aren’t yet fully worked through. Uncertainty remains about the fate of the support that’s currently provided for childcare costs through working tax credit. The government says it’s looking at various options including vouchers, discounts and an additional earnings disregard. Uncertainty also surrounds a number of disability premiums in the present system, though the disability living allowance is to remain outside the UC – with a new tougher ‘gateway’ test. The government says it will consult on whether changes are needed to carers’ allowance, though it wants to recognise caring in the UC structure. And it has yet to work through how passporting to benefits such as free school meals and prescriptions will work under the UC.

Essentially, these uncertainties reflect the fact that ministers are discovering what apologists for the complex benefits system have long claimed: that the system’s complexity reflects a complex range of need.

There are other causes of concern. Hardship payments are turned into loans, social fund loans become advances on benefits, and crisis payments are turned over to local authorities, so that they can be better aligned with social services, though this does nothing to address the postcode lottery that already exists.

Council tax benefit remains right outside the system, and the chancellor announced in the spending review that it would be reduced by 10 per cent and administered by local authorities. Hundreds of councils setting their own individual rules is hardly a recipe for simplicity or fairness. Child benefit will also remain outside the UC, now as a means-tested benefit following announcements in the spending review, but presumably still paid to the main carer (though the picture’s confused for higher rate taxpayers now that households with a top-rate taxpayer will no longer be eligible for it).

Contributory benefits are also outside the scope of UC, though the spending review announcement that contributory employment and support allowance (ESA) will be time-limited means that long-term recipients of ESA who don’t find work after one year will come into UC.

Overall, the potential remains for confusion as the UC struggles to cope with varied circumstances.

The white paper isn’t just concerned with the design of the benefits system however – it addresses policies to activate worksearch too. And worryingly, worksearch requirements are significantly tightened, with sanctions becoming considerably harsher than what already is in practice one of the toughest conditionality regimes in the world. Lone parents whose youngest child is aged five or more will be required to be available for work. Anyone with a child aged over one will be expected to remain in touch with their JobCentre, and the penalties for failing to comply with requirements could leave a small minority of vulnerable people with no benefits for literally years.

Ministers have succumbed to a regrettable temptation to talk tough on sanctions, fraud and scroungers, yet the white paper acknowledges that the proportion of claimants this refers to, many of them vulnerable, is very small indeed. And here we get to the biggest defect in the white paper: the total absence of context. The new work programme (remarkably similar in appearance to Labour’s flexible new deal) is hailed as offering every claimant personalised support to enable them to move into employment, but nowhere is there discussion of the structural barriers to work, discrimination in the workplace, low pay and poor conditions, the difficulty of finding affordable childcare, or lack of suitable jobs.

Equally, the white paper has nothing to say about ensuring an adequate safety net. It claims that 350,000 children will be lifted out of poverty, but doesn’t tell us how. Instead, what we’ve seen from the chancellor in the emergency budget and spending review are swingeing cuts to the benefits bill, to housing benefit, to tax credits, and to future uprating of benefits, that mean that the poorest will be significantly worse off.

£18billion of cuts to the benefits bill must inevitably lead to hardship – at a time when one million jobs are being lost, and VAT, costs of travel and energy prices are all due to increase. Cuts to public service budgets will make it harder for those with caring responsibilities or high levels of need to access the support they need to be able to go out to work – and women in particular will be hit by public sector job cuts.

So the claims of the secretary of state that his proposals will substantially reduce poverty as well as being fairer feel well wide of the mark. No-one can be satisfied with the system it’s replacing, but a truly enabling welfare state requires greater effort, attention to detail and to fairness than these proposals bring.

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