benefit simplification

The Centre for Social Justice, a think tank set up by Iain Duncan Smith, has released a report calling for the replacement of 51 separate working age benefits with just two:

• Universal Work Credit would replace out of work benefits (JSA, IB, ESA, and IS), and would require participation in welfare to work programmes in order to 'earn' it
• Universal Life Credit would replace more general support benefits (HB, CTB, DLA, WTC, and CTC).

The other main element of the proposal is tapering the benefits so that they are gradually reduced as people do more work. The authors claim that the proposal would cost money in the short term (£3.7bn a year) but would be self-financing in the longer term.

Recognised as a major influence on the thinking of a future Conservative government, the Policy Exchange is moving beyond Freud to look at one of the enduring problems of the welfare state: the ever-increasing complexity of benefit rules, and how they might be simplified. As Theresa May acknowledged in her own appearance at the conference, research on this is in the earliest stages, and the session was mostly a debate rather than a presentation of results. Taking the idea of a single, universal benefit as a starting point, the discussion quickly revealed why so many ministers have come in intending to simplify the benefits system and left with something even more complex in its place.