Damaging rigidity of universal credit | Letters

Letters

Wednesday, 08 Aug 2018

# Austerity

The ‘whole month approach’ to changes of circumstances will create problems for universal credit recipients, says Fran Bennett; Sarah Sheils says parliament’s failure to tackle child food poverty has a long history

Your report (Households left in debt by flaws in design of universal credit system, 6 August) rightly focuses on the rigidity of the monthly assessment for universal credit when it comes to the different ways in which people are paid. But the report from the Child Poverty Action Group published that day also highlighted the “whole-month approach” to changes of circumstances, which will create additional problems. So, for example, if you move to a flat with a lower rent in the middle of the month, that is the rent you are assumed to have paid for the whole month when your universal credit is worked out – leaving you with a shortfall. And if your daughter moves out the day before your assessment date, you will get no universal credit for having fed her for the whole of that month. So your universal credit may go up and down in an arbitrary way in relation to your needs, depending on when things happen. Yet you are expected to be learning to budget on a monthly basis. You couldn’t make it up.
Fran Bennett
Oxford

• Readers might be interested to know (Ministers’ secret plan to assess role of austerity in food poverty, 8 August) that in the summer of 1914, Arnold Rowntree, then Liberal MP for York, managed to put a bill before parliament that would have provided free school meals during the school summer holidays for children normally in receipt of free school meals in term time. His proposal was backed up by the research done by his cousin, Seebohm Rowntree, who showed that the need arose because of low wages paid to working parents, particularly in the railway and postal services. Unfortunately, the bill, introduced on 28 July 1914, fell foul of the outbreak of the first world war on 4 August. Plus ça change.
Sarah Sheils
York

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters

• Do you have a photo you’d like to share with other Guardian readers? Click here to upload it and we’ll publish the best submissions in the letters spread in our print edition

Letters

Wednesday, 08 Aug 2018

The GuardianTramp

Related Content

The Guardian view on universal credit: Labour’s plan makes sense | Editorial

Editorial: The underlying problem with the flagship Tory policy is the idea that claimants need to change. Could a new government turn this on its head?

Editorial

30, Sep, 2019 @6:23 PM

The misery, despair and pain of universal credit | Letters

Letters: Readers offer their views on – and personal first-hand testimony of – the government’s troubled benefits system

Letters

10, Jan, 2019 @5:30 PM

Angered by the damage that austerity does to the poor | Letters

Letters: Readers respond after the UN poverty envoy said austerity has inflicted ‘great misery’ on UK citizens

Letters

19, Nov, 2018 @5:46 PM

Two tales from the frontline of austerity | Letters

Letters: Universal credit’s effect on food bank use may be greater than statistics suggest, says Jane Middleton, while an anonymous reader eligible for £1.26 a month of the benefit wonders how many others are in her situation

Letters

30, Apr, 2019 @4:37 PM

Food poverty and the chance to make a difference in the election | Letters

Letters: Jane Middleton urges readers to vote Labour to end the Tory-induced epidemic of food bank use, while Jane Streather says the next government must increase funding for the provision of free food to children

Letters

18, Nov, 2019 @6:53 PM

Universal credit plan needs more thought | Letters

Letters: Organisations supporting people and families on a low income are concerned that the government’s proposed approach will risk pushing vulnerable people further into poverty

Letters

08, Oct, 2018 @5:26 PM

Christmas cancelled by universal credit as benefit cuts hit the most vulnerable | Letters

Letters: Unless urgent changes are made to increase benefits and tax credits, and reform universal credit, the impact on poor families will be devastating, says Mike Stein. Meanwhile, David Higdon is shocked to find a woman at the checkout in tears

Letters

06, Nov, 2017 @6:51 PM

Universal credit spin is at odds with reality | Letters

Letters: Obvious failures in the government’s welfare policy can’t be glossed over with an ad campaign, say Garry Lemon and Paul Nicolson

Letters

17, May, 2019 @4:21 PM

I can’t survive on universal credit | Letter

Letter: A claimant is shocked that the government would sanction such a huge decrease in benefit payments

Letters

29, Oct, 2018 @5:07 PM

More on universal credit row, please | Letters

Letters: Judith Dimond wants a human face on the disaster, while Tim Davies questions all politicians’ honesty

Letters

05, Jul, 2018 @4:50 PM