I’ve long been clear about the problems of Universal Credit and so I’m joining forces with lots of colleagues to call once again for David Gauke and the DWP to delay their full rollout. Despite only having been rolled out in a few places, the DWP admit only 40% of people can assess the Verify portal and 23% don’t receive their payment within 6 weeks.  Payment delays are often 12-13 weeks, causing enormous hardship and anxiety to claimants facing huge delays in payment.

As of last month Citizens Advice told me that despite only 7% of claimants receiving Universal Credit, they’d already had to deal with 80,000 problems, a number sure to rise with a premature rollout.

The DWP claims they are listening to concerns – if that’s the case they’ll pay attention to the many individuals and organisations pointing out the serious flaws in the Universal Credit scheme.