UC Scottish Mitigations in a nutshell

Hi thank you for finding my blog. I am calling on the Scottish Government to bundle up all the good work it is doing or plannning to do to mitigate cuts to Universal Credit into one package of changes to Universal Credit itself for “claimants” in Scotland.

At the time of writing the Scottish Government is about to start a load of work to mitigate the two child limit. This will involve laying regulations, spending £millions designing and implementing a new benefit payment, and administering it (via the Social Security Scotland agency) with all that entails, processing thousands of applications and making thousands of payments every month. It’s a big job.

My message is STOP! There’s a better way. Work with the UK Government to fix it at source through Universal Credit. And while you’re at it fix the bedroom tax and the benefit cap the same way too, all in one go.

Hopefully already you can see why fixing all three uk welfare cuts at source may be better for Scottish claimants, but in this blog over a series of posts I intend to set out why it’s better for claimants, why it’s better for taxpayers, that it can be done, and that the objections people may raise to this can all be answered.

If you’re persuaded by my case, I ask you to lobby the Scottish and uk governments to put in place what I believe could be a package of changes to universal credit that together help reduce poverty and prevent homelessness.

Thank you for reading!

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