Universal Credit

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Universal Credit is a United Kingdom–based social security payment. It is means-tested and is replacing and combining six benefits, for working-age households with a low income: income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), income-based Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA), and Income Support; Child Tax Credit (CTC) and Working Tax Credit (WTC); and Housing Benefit. While Universal Credit replaced six working-age means-tested benefits, Council Tax Benefit was explicitly excluded from the reform and devolved to local government administration. An award of UC is made up of different elements, which become payable to the claimant if relevant criteria apply: a standard allowance for singles or couples, child elements and disabled child elements for children in the household, housing cost element, childcare costs element, as well as elements for being a carer or for having limited capability to work-related activities, due to illness or disability. The new policy was announced in 2010 at the Conservative Party annual conference by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, who said it would make the social security system fairer to claimants and taxpayers. At the same venue the Welfare Reform Minister, Lord Freud, emphasised the scale of their plan, saying it was a "once in many generations" reform. A government white paper was published in November 2010. A key feature of the proposed new benefit was that unemployment payments would taper off as the recipient moved into work, not suddenly stop, thus avoiding a "cliff edge" that was said to "trap" people in unemployment. Universal Credit was legislated for in the Welfare Reform Act 2012. In 2013, the new benefit began to be rolled out gradually to Jobcentres, initially focusing on new claimants with the least complex circumstances: single people who were not claiming for the cost of their accommodation. There were problems with the...