Cabinet Office finally finds missing report showing difficulties facing ‘vulnerable’ universal credit claimants

The Cabinet Office has finally found a missing report that showed the “additional difficulties” faced by “vulnerable” universal credit claimants, despite originally claiming it could not locate the document.

The existence of the 2019 report was not known about outside government circles until DWP was forced by a tribunal to release a follow-up report late last year.

DWP had been trying to prevent the release of the follow-up report by the Prime Minister’s Implementation Unit (PMIU) since its existence was revealed in October 2021 in universal credit papers secured through a freedom of information battle by campaigner John Slater.

The follow-up report, How Effective is Support for Vulnerable Universal Credit Claimants?, revealed significant flaws at the heart of the universal credit system and how DWP supports claimants it sees as vulnerable.

Disability News Service (DNS) had been seeking a copy of the report since late 2021, alongside Slater and Owen Stevens, from Child Poverty Action Group.

The original report was also written by PMIU, which was based within the Cabinet Office, but has since been scrapped.

But when DNS tried to obtain a copy of the original report, both DWP and the Cabinet Office originally suggested it was being held by the other department.

The Cabinet Office claimed earlier this year that “following a search of our paper and electronic records, we have established that the information you requested is not held by the Cabinet Office – Equality Hub”.

But after DNS asked the Cabinet Office to “look a little harder”, it has now found the report, Experience of Claimants and Vulnerable Groups, after carrying out “further searches of additional areas” of its “records and archives”.

The report warns that “vulnerable” claimants of universal credit (UC) – which can include those with long-term conditions and other disabled people, asylum-seekers, those who are homeless and survivors of domestic abuse – “can face additional difficulties claiming UC particularly when making a claim, meeting commitments and managing finances”.

It concludes that only a “small number of vulnerable groups” are captured by the data and analysis which DWP uses to measure the “experience and outcomes” of UC claimants.

It also warns that the “experience of many groups of vulnerable claimants on UC is not currently understood”, while there is a “lack of evidence” on whether the range of support that has been introduced to help these groups is “delivered consistently and delivering the desired outcomes with efficacy”.

DNS has been trying to raise concerns about the serious flaws within universal credit, both with DWP and the Labour party, for the last 18 months.

Slater said the report did not reflect well on DWP and its universal credit team.

He said it suggested that “vulnerable” claimants would be sanctioned or lose some of their entitlement because the system could not cope with their “additional difficulties”, and that this could put their health or even their lives at risk, with staff usually “far too busy to identify vulnerable people and treat them differently”.

He also pointed to DWP research, highlighted in the 2019 report, which found that 44 per cent of claimants fell behind with bills or credit commitments or experience financial difficulties within three months of making a claim.

He said the report suggested that DWP “doesn’t understand (and doesn’t want to understand) the real world that UC claimants live in.

“Unless people fit the ‘standard claimant’ model for the UC claimant the ‘UC system’ can’t cope with them.

“I’m not sure that has significantly changed since this report was written.”

A DWP spokesperson declined to comment on the Experience of Claimants and Vulnerable Groups report.

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