UC needs to be redesigned. Flickr/DWP. Some rights reserved.
There are some issues where a little bit of knowledge, and a lot of bluster, are all that’s needed for a politician – whether government or opposition – to get through a standard media grilling.
Universal Credit (UC), the government’s flagship and troubled welfare reform that integrates six separate welfare benefits, is a case in point. Its champions speak of its near mystical power in tackling all manner of social ills from child poverty to unemployment. Ranked against them are those who invoke woeful IT contracting and the snail-like progress of the policy’s roll-out, as if no more needs to be said to prove that the whole idea is futile. Media understanding of the underlying policy is in most instances limited, meaning hard questions about it are few and far between. This permits the continuation of a dangerous myth: that the problems facing UC are all about delivery, not design.
