Minister admits fatal flaws in universal credit ‘need to be fixed’ and tells DNS: ‘You’ve been onto something very important’

The minister for social security has admitted there are serious safety concerns with universal credit, following coroners’ reports that linked the working-age benefits system with the suicides of two disabled claimants.

Sir Stephen Timms is the first minister of any political party to accept the fatal flaws within universal credit and to promise to fix them.

Although he dismissed any possibility that universal credit itself would be scrapped, he told Disability News Service (DNS) that there were “problematic” features of the system and “they need to be fixed”.

He was speaking at Labour’s party conference in Liverpool at a fringe meeting on poverty organised by the Centre for Social Justice, the centre-right thinktank founded by former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, which was responsible for the original design of universal credit.

DNS editor John Pring had told the meeting of the increasing concerns about universal credit, including by coroners following two suicides of claimants whose deaths were both linked to flaws in the system and the pressure it puts on people in mental distress.

He said universal credit was now being rolled out to claimants of employment and support allowance.

Pring pointed out that the PCS union had described universal credit in June as a “dangerously flawed system” in which “the most vulnerable continue to slip through its cracks”.

He asked Sir Stephen if he accepted the concerns and what he would do about them.

Pring also highlighted the publication of his book The Department*, about years of deaths linked to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), mostly relating to disability benefits, and told him: “I do not want to [have to write a] follow-up in 10 years’ time”.

Sir Stephen said there were problems with universal credit that DNS was “rightly highlighting, and that you have highlighted very consistently over a lengthy period now and have frequently been denied by the department, but they have carried on happening”.

And he added: “I think you’ve been onto something very important.”

But he said he did not believe these deaths and other harm were happening because universal credit was introduced, but because of flaws in the system.

He said: “I do think there are features of universal credit which are problematic, and they need to be fixed, but I don’t think they are inherent problems.

“I think we’ve got to change the system we’ve got to do a better job, and to avoid these problems.”

But he also said he wanted to open DWP up to greater public scrutiny.

Sir Stephen told Pring: “One of the things we need to do is open up what is going on in the Department for Work and Pensions to public scrutiny, and John, you are one of the most prolific applicants for freedom of information requests to the department, and quite right too.

“The department has absurdly refused to answer lots of the questions that you have asked and that is something that we want to change… because public scrutiny is a good thing, and it puts pressure on ministers and on civil servants to have the consequences of what they are doing known about publicly.

“And that’s an area that I’m working on and which the secretary of state may have something to say about in her speech later in the week [Liz Kendall did not mention transparency in her speech yesterday (Wednesday)].

“Yes, we do need to make some very big changes to the way things work, but I don’t believe that scrapping universal credit… would be the answer.”

And he said universal credit had done a “really powerful and good job during the pandemic” when the old system “would have just collapsed” under the weight of new claims.

A Labour delegate, Julie Jarman, asked Sir Stephen whether there should be a “proper independent regulator” and “publicly accessible service standards” for the social security system, playing the role that Ofsted plays in education, so “people in receipt of benefits, as with other public services, can actually hold the service providers to account”.

But he said he was “not convinced” that having a separate regulator outside DWP would “deal with these problems”.

Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, told the meeting that he believed that there needed to be a national “housing first” scheme – as there is in Greater Manchester, and Finland – so that everyone is guaranteed a “good, secure home”.

He said this is based on the idea that “any other public spending is wasted unless you’ve sorted out the housing first” and that such a policy would result in “so much less” spending on “the cost of social failure”.

He also said the government needed to “completely rethink how we support people, and we’ve got to make it positive not punitive”, particularly through devolution of employment support to local authorities.

He said: “If I had my way, I would rename every Jobcentre Plus in Greater Manchester a ‘live well centre’, and rather than spending the employment support budget through large corporate entities, who don’t actually care much for our communities, we would spend that money through our local community and voluntary sector.”

He said the system should be “about helping people move forward and not trying to trip them up and sanction them.

“Shock revelation: that doesn’t get people into work.

“If somebody goes into a Jobcentre Plus in one door and comes out feeling worse 20 minutes later after the consultation, that is not building them up to get back to a position where they can go into work.

“That is doing the opposite, it’s taking people away further from work.”

*The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, by John Pring, is published by Pluto Press 

Picture: Sir Stephen Timms (second from left) at Sunday’s fringe event

A note from the editor:

Please consider making a voluntary financial contribution to support the work of DNS and allow it to continue producing independent, carefully-researched news stories that focus on the lives and rights of disabled people and their user-led organisations.

Please do not contribute if you cannot afford to do so, and please note that DNS is not a charity. It is run and owned by disabled journalist John Pring and has been from its launch in April 2009.

Thank you for anything you can do to support the work of DNS…