As well as outlining its principles and its
faults below, Vince has called this month (October 2018) for it to be stalled
in order to overcome the hardships it is causing and to put £3bn more into
it. The £3bn was cut from welfare
spending soon after the coalition ended.
When Lib-Dems were in government we prevented this from happening.
“The
problems stem from conflicting objectives: providing minimum family income;
providing incentives to work; simplification; and saving money. Simplification,
saving money and work incentives have taken precedence over the first, crucial,
priority.
“Practical problems have been ignored creating real hardship, payment
delays in the switchover, penalties for the self-employed; use of a single bank
account for divided families; barriers to work from lack of childcare; monthly
payments for those on weekly or casual wages; technical complexities in
establishing online payment; and the use of Universal Credit to facilitate debt
collection…
“[But] the fact that UC is becoming loathed and is being implemented
incompetently and harshly does not invalidate the reasoning behind it. I
strongly repudiate the Labour Party’s suggestion that Universal Credit should
be scrapped without being clear what the replacement is: a classic case of
soundbites taking precedence over thought-through policies .”