Lesley Riddoch: Universal Credit is a cruel failure that causes misery ... Scotland could do things differently

Government ministers clearly felt a Nobel Peace Prize was round the corner after scrapping the heartless 55p per minute helpline charge they imposed on thousands of luckless guinea pigs caught up in their four-year Universal Credit pilot.

Now up to eight million other claimants can relax safe in the knowledge that the 10 emergency calls it usually takes to report but get no action on non-payment leading to rent arrears, homelessness, hunger, mental health problems and eviction will be free. No extra help of course, but no extra debt. In Britain these days, that counts as a result.

Now the helpline won’t be free right away – of course not. It takes time for the Magic Money Tree to come up with hard cash when it’s helping desperate citizens and not buying DUP votes. Still, the prospect of a free call to any Department of Work and Pensions number in 2018 is something to look forward to, isn’t it?

It would be hilarious, satire-provoking stuff if it wasn’t so utterly grim.

And it is. The voice of Highlands MSP Maree Todd was shaking with emotion last week, when she told SNP conference delegates that terminally ill people in her constituency can’t make a UC claim without verifying they are about to die. That’s true. The Tories removed the possibility of friends or family acting as advocates for seriously ill claimants – it seems acting for yourself encourages independence. If this was a process described in Brave New World we would think Aldous Huxley must have invented such perfect cruelty.

But Highland claimants have had to get used to harshness, poverty, delay and remote arbitrary decision-making because it’s been a Universal Credit pilot area for the past four years, along with East Dunbartonshire and East Lothian. So there is a catalogue of failure available for all to see – yet no hint of a U-turn on the relentless rollout of Universal Credit across Britain.

Highland MP Drew Hendry has spoken about one constituent called Abbey whose payments were stopped when she went on maternity leave, leaving her with £2,000 in rent arrears and surviving on food vouchers during the four months it took to fix the error. Another constituent, a single mum-of-two with cancer named Leanne, waited six weeks for payment only for the amount to be £500 short. The DWP demanded she attend a work capability assessment before they would pay the correct amount. Another expectant mother named Rachael waited for payment from Christmas till April as the result of a DWP mistake, which left her facing eviction with £1,500 of arrears. She was asked to make a 200-mile round trip to Aberdeen to sort out the problem.

London-based Guardian journalist Amelia Gentleman has publicised the case of Mhairi Thomson, a 35-year-old care worker facing eviction from her home of 16 years. She claimed Universal Credit last September before getting married; her fiance moved into the house she shared with her 15-year-old daughter and that forced a reassessment of her benefit eligibility.

Universal Credit was unpaid for five months, leaving her struggling to pay rent, buy food or give her daughter £2.50 dinner money while studying for exams. Mhairi lost her landline and internet connection, which left her unable to query the missing payments because Universal Credit can only be claimed online (another hurdle for many users).

Rather than use the expensive landline, Mhairi stood for hours in the doorway of Asda, using the supermarket’s free wifi. She raised 26 queries in her “online journal” to get payments restarted – a system designed to simplify communication between claimant and the DWP. None of her queries was answered.

The journal said money had been paid - her bank account showed it had not. When the housing association rang to say she was facing eviction Mhairi was close to a nervous breakdown.

Since then intervention by her MP and a charitable donation have helped but there are hundreds in the same position – folk who have never had a debt in their lives, pushed over the brink into grinding poverty, despair, isolation and the arms of loan sharks by the administrative nightmare that is Universal Credit.

Are these one-offs?

No. Highland council has 1,521 tenants on UC and a whopping 80 per cent are in arrears.

It’s the same in East Dunbartonshire where the Commons Work and Pensions Committee recently heard 92 per cent of tenants on UC have been forced into rent arrears by late payments.

Yet the system will be “rolled out” regardless. Think this car crash of a “system” couldn’t come your way? Think again.

According to a Financial Conduct Authority report yesterday, half the population is financially vulnerable and one in six people would be unable to cope with a £50 increase in their monthly bills. In the biggest ever survey of households, the City regulator found 4.1 million people had already fallen behind with bills and credit card payments.

THIS is the human misery behind Universal Credit.

So why doesn’t the UK Government put the rollout on hold and admit it got this policy wrong alongside so many others “crafted” by Iain Duncan Smith?

Well unless you’ve been on another planet you’ll know that UC rolls six benefits (Jobseeker’s Allowance, Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support, Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit and Housing Benefit) into one benefit.

The big problem is that after “migrating” to Universal Credit, claimants must face a formal waiting period of one week with no money, and then a further five to six weeks before they are paid – a month in arrears.

Why does anyone think that’s a good idea? Because it supposedly mimics the real jobs market and therefore makes it psychologically easier for folk taking a job where they’ll also be paid in arrears.

Actually, that’s wrong – jobs for the majority of casual, zero-hour, temporary and casual workers are paid weekly, not monthly. So no reality-mimicking there. And you’ll be doing well if the wait is “just” a total of six weeks.

Ah but there are advance payments (loans) to help tide folk over (a generous £3 per day). Dream on. Repeated questions by MPs like the SNP’s Neil Gray have uncovered no statistics on how much emergency cash has been handed out. Despite the fact this new automated system is meant to be “data rich” there is next to no statistical evidence in the public domain.

There is apparently one outdated set of statistics about single people in a North West of England pilot zone that shows they have marginally better employment prospects and pay under UC than the old Jobseeker’s Allowance. But those sampled are single folk without children, disabilities or dependents – in short, the easiest folk to place in work.

Yet the UK Government will roll out Universal Credit based on this very limited data and in spite of anecdotal and academic evidence suggesting widespread system failure.

So what to do?

Don’t depend on Scottish Tories to revolt – benefits provision plainly bores most of them. Indeed we should perhaps admire the brazen Douglas Ross who’s off working as a European football referee in Barcelona instead of hanging round the green benches trying to look concerned. One fewer set of crocodile tears.

But it is worth hoping the Scottish Government can do better. Social Security Minister Jeanne Freeman has already said new UC claimants here will be able to opt for fortnightly payments and get rent paid directly to landlords.

But the fortnightly option won’t apply to all existing claimants – and that cruel, six-week, benefits-free “set-up” period remains, because Scots can only vary the system once claimants have been approved by the DWP. Nonetheless, the Scottish Welfare Fund is handing out crisis grants to get through the difficult six weeks – not tiny loans which must be paid back.

That’s why Jim McCormick from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation doesn’t back Labour and the SNP who’ve called for the rollout to be halted. He says the UK Government could scrap the most destructive parts of Universal Credit now or later in the Budget or let Scotland pilot a whole system that doesn’t pay in arrears. “Six months of inactivity won’t help those at the sharp end,” he says.

Quite. If the predicted Tory revolt at Westminster fails this week, Scots will keep demanding urgent change. Who knows – much as it vexes Labour – backing Scotland to pilot a genuinely different system might be the best way forward for everyone.