Wednesday, May 01, 2019
Opaque universal credit is Orwellian claims judge
It has been some time since I have heard George Orwell's 1984 cited, and even longer since I have used the author's name used in the context of the language he invented for the book of doublespeak. It is noteworthy therefore to see a report this morning in which a former high court judge reference the novel when commenting on universal credit.
As the Guardian reports, Sir Stephen Sedley has described universal credit as “Orwellian” because of its tendency to create and exacerbate misery for claimants even while it professes to be rescuing them from hardship.
His comments about the troubled digital benefits system accompanied a report that revealed hundreds of claimants risked falling into debt because the system had miscalculated their monthly benefit payments:
Claimants who were underpaid, or overpaid, sums amounting in some cases to hundreds of pounds a month were routinely unable to work out the correct payment, or how they could challenge the decision, the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) report said.
The charity criticised the “opaque” way in which individuals’ monthly benefits payments were calculated, and said the lack of information provided to claimants who wished to challenge the calculation was in some cases unlawful.
It cited the case of a working mother who was left £400 a month worse off after universal credit neglected to include a child element for her daughter or a work allowance, an error only spotted when she went to a welfare rights adviser.
Universal credit rolls six different working-age benefits into one and CPAG said this means it is difficult for claimants to unpick the different components of the payment or work out whether it is correct.
One in five of 1,110 cases gathered by the charity as part of a universal credit monitoring project involved administrative errors by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which were likely to result in the claimant being paid the wrong amount.
Sedley, a former lord justice of appeal and now a visiting professor at Oxford University, said universal credit was repeatedly failing to meet its legal obligations to make it clear why a particular decision had been made, or how claimants could appeal if they thought it was wrong.
“People in need are left to guess at and grope for things which should be clear and tangible. The consequences are not limited to over- or underpayment. They feed into the stress and worry that so many people managing on low incomes experience, which in turn can affect family life for children growing up in these environments,” he said.
“There is something Orwellian about a system which is intended to alleviate hardship yet is administered in ways which generate and aggravate human misery. Whether this is happening by accident or by design is an argument for another time and place.”
The fact that spotting errors is difficult for claimants just exacerbates the weaknesses of this new system. It does not help either that universal credit helpline staff are often unable to help because they do not have access to the calculations, which had been made automatically by the digital system.
Clearly there is a need for payments to be made more transparent and easier to understand as well as to change the other issues associated with universal credit such as the waiting period before any money is paid over.
As the Guardian reports, Sir Stephen Sedley has described universal credit as “Orwellian” because of its tendency to create and exacerbate misery for claimants even while it professes to be rescuing them from hardship.
His comments about the troubled digital benefits system accompanied a report that revealed hundreds of claimants risked falling into debt because the system had miscalculated their monthly benefit payments:
Claimants who were underpaid, or overpaid, sums amounting in some cases to hundreds of pounds a month were routinely unable to work out the correct payment, or how they could challenge the decision, the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) report said.
The charity criticised the “opaque” way in which individuals’ monthly benefits payments were calculated, and said the lack of information provided to claimants who wished to challenge the calculation was in some cases unlawful.
It cited the case of a working mother who was left £400 a month worse off after universal credit neglected to include a child element for her daughter or a work allowance, an error only spotted when she went to a welfare rights adviser.
Universal credit rolls six different working-age benefits into one and CPAG said this means it is difficult for claimants to unpick the different components of the payment or work out whether it is correct.
One in five of 1,110 cases gathered by the charity as part of a universal credit monitoring project involved administrative errors by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which were likely to result in the claimant being paid the wrong amount.
Sedley, a former lord justice of appeal and now a visiting professor at Oxford University, said universal credit was repeatedly failing to meet its legal obligations to make it clear why a particular decision had been made, or how claimants could appeal if they thought it was wrong.
“People in need are left to guess at and grope for things which should be clear and tangible. The consequences are not limited to over- or underpayment. They feed into the stress and worry that so many people managing on low incomes experience, which in turn can affect family life for children growing up in these environments,” he said.
“There is something Orwellian about a system which is intended to alleviate hardship yet is administered in ways which generate and aggravate human misery. Whether this is happening by accident or by design is an argument for another time and place.”
The fact that spotting errors is difficult for claimants just exacerbates the weaknesses of this new system. It does not help either that universal credit helpline staff are often unable to help because they do not have access to the calculations, which had been made automatically by the digital system.
Clearly there is a need for payments to be made more transparent and easier to understand as well as to change the other issues associated with universal credit such as the waiting period before any money is paid over.
