The National Association of Welfare Rights Advisers (NAWRA) has made a submission to the Social Security Advisory Committee about ‘managed migration’ to Universal Credit. They point to a series of problems:
- the difficulties people have in making digital claims
- the lack of reasonable adjustments for people with disabilities
- requiring claimants to make claims in order to migrate, and using mistakes or omissions as a reason to demand fresh claims
- insufficient levels of ‘universal support’
- obstacles to cooperation with welfare rights advisers
- the DWP’s apparent inability to engage with the process by which claimants report changes, the electronic ‘journal’
- the inappropriate use of sanctions.
All of this implies a need to “pause and fix”. But even if that happens, the fundamental problems in the design and delivery of the benefit will still be there.