Devisers of Universal Credit blithely wish claimants a rotten Christmas 2017?

Placard: "Government knows what it's doing."
Do you know what they are planning?

From Private Eye, 3-16 November issue 'In the Back' p37 (the one with a 'sex shop' photo on the cover):

With the opposition, the Commons work and pensions select committee and even universal credit's instigator, Iain Duncan Smith, lining up to condemn the minimum six-week which new recipients must undergo before they see any cash, pressure is mounting on the government to reduce the arrears period. But this initial wait for cash may not be the only period during which UC claimants go without funds.

For claimants who are in work and paid weekly (which is the case in many low-paid jobs that will qualify for UC top-ups), the small print of the benefit makes it clear that they will run into problems whenever they receive five pay packages withing the calendar months that are used to calculate their UC eligibility.

"When you have five weekly earnings payments within an assessment period, your income may be too high to qualify for universal credit in that month," say the DWP rules. "If this happens you will be notified that your income is too high and you will no longer ge universal credit. You can re-apply the following month as you should only get for wage payments in your assessment period then."

The vagaries of the calendar will not, of course, affect the amount workers are actually earning — but a month with five Fridays (this December, for example) will see them automatically lose their entire universal credit for that period. "You will need to be prepared for a month when you get five wage payments in one assessment period and budget for a potential change in your monthly universal credit payments," the DWP guidelines state blithely.

In 2018, March, June, August and November will all have five Fridays — so UC claimants who are paid weekly may have to budget for extraordinarily lean months for a third of the year. The DWP itself admitted in a report published last month that delays in UC payments were "a key factor" in claimants falling into rent arrears.

Given that UC has supposedly been designed to mimic standard work pay patterns, this fluctuation seems particularly cruel: no employer, after all, docks pay following every five-week month, or pays them less because they are on a weekly wage.

So, for those on UC and getting paid weekly this December, Christmas is cancelled!

I'm sorry to be a bearer of bad news, but maybe to be forewarned is to be forearmed?

Dude Swheatie of Kwug

DWP to sanction HB claimants

From Revd Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty

UNIVERSAL DESPAIR

DWP makes the point for a "yes" vote

in Scotland

by announcing "Part-time workers judged to be doing too little to find full-time work face having their benefit for housing costs sanctioned by the government for the first time under universal credit. ‘It is only right that people claiming benefits should be aware that not sticking to the rules can have a consequence. Any reductions to benefits as a result of a sanction are applied to the universal credit benefit as a whole rather than a particular element of it,' say Ministers.

Inside Housing article — DWP: Housing benefit will be sanctioned.

Yesterday The Times published the following letter which I edited from a letter I have already sent you.

It was the lead letter. I became an associate of the Iona Community in the 1990s which, since its foundation on the Isle of Iona in 1938, has been committed to peace and justice.

DEEP DIVISIONS HAVE BEEN EXPOSED BY BOTH THE "YES" AND "NO" CAMPAIGNS

.

Sir, Magnus Linklater (Opinion, Sept 1) is right. Deep divisions have been exposed by both the Yes and No campaigns and opened up wounds which will be hard to heal. The Church of Scotland decided to remain neutral, but influential members of the Kirk deeply committed to social justice, including the leader of the Iona Community Peter MacDonald, are expressing the concerns shared by many of us who work with and for the poorest citizens of England and voting yes.

He said: “I no longer believe the Westminster government is capable of delivering the socially just and equitable society in which I want to live. The British state no longer serves the needs of all its people. Economic policies have favoured the wealthy who have grown richer, and stigmatised the poor and vulnerable who are paying for the failures of the private financial sector.” Even if Scotland votes No the wounds will remain unhealed north and south of the border until confidence of every UK citizen in the fairness of the Westminster government is restored.