Universal Credit is a failing system that has made it too easy to have people "signed off and written off", the DWP Secretary has said.
Criticism of Universal Credit
Pat McFadden criticised the welfare system set up by former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, and claimed the flaws within the system were not a bug, "but a feature". Universal Credit costs the UK taxpayer £67billion a year, and ministers have faced a battle with their own MPs to reform welfare.
Last year Keir Starmer suffered a major rebellion on cuts to disability benefits - despite a U-turn just minutes before the vote.
McFadden's comments in the Netherlands
Speaking in the Netherlands during a trip to learn about how the Dutch get young people into work, Mr McFadden insisted he wasn't making a policy, but criticised how Universal Credit worked.
The senior minister said: "There is a design flaw in our credit system, which was built into Universal Credit on the way it was designed, which is that it is too easy for people to be signed off and written off with them receiving no help, no support, and no obligations. Sometimes this is described I think by the Resolution Foundation recently as a no support, no conditions regime… and that is built in as a design feature in the current Universal Credit setup. It's not a bug, it's a feature.
"I think the universal credit system was well meant by Iain Duncan Smith when he put it together, but I don't feel that this aspect of bringing health and unemployment right together into one process was really thought through, or they could foresee the consequences, but that's what's happened.
"The contrast between that and the Dutch system of multiple interventions, so that inactivity in the Netherlands becomes a last resort rather than something that is reinforced by a system failure, by a design flaw in the system, is an awful big contrast, and to me it's the biggest lesson from what I've learned today."
Future reforms
Attempts to reform welfare were not included in the King's Speech, but ministers are expected to try again to introduce reforms. Labour leadership hopeful Andy Burnham this week called for a "preventative" approach to reduce the welfare bill and help boost funding for defence.
