The Universal Credit is a winner!

Reading this morning that Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, has won his battle with the Treasury is heart warming. Anyone who knows IDS and has followed his work in the Centre for Social Justice knows his passion and commitment for fair, just and sensible social reforms, and today’s news is the crowning of years of his visionary and relentless dedication to that issue.

All the current benefits – housing benefit, income support, incapacity benefit and many others in the current scheme will be phased out into a single system – the ‘Universal Credit’. The new scheme is a simpler single benefit that will allow for claimants’ details to be kept in one system and unlike the current one that penalizes work, the new benefit guarantees people will be better off in work by allowing them to keep their benefit while working for short hours or when they increase their working hours. Along with that it will save the tax payer around £9bn a year in benefits.

The Universal Credit system should be fully operational within three years and it is said that the Treasury has allowed the DWP to use the first year’s savings to fund the changes needed which are intended to cut both cost and fraud. And although full details are not out yet but the skeleton of the work is in-line with Duncan Smith’s approach to fairness, equal opportunity, social justice and his belief that people must take responsibility for their own choices but that government has a responsibility to support them in making the right choice while still lending a helping hand to those who need it in our society.