rebeccariots2 wrote:TechnicalEphemera wrote:rebeccariots2 wrote:We were thinking Rachel Reeves had been rather quiet - well, very quiet - of late. She has just written to IDS re Universal Credit ... seeking answers on rather a lot of issues. I'm glad she is challenging him - but the basis of her challenge still seems far too technical. Get an injection of humanity Rachel ... please ask about the impact of all the problems you have identified on the very real people affected by them.
Forensic I would have said.
Reeves has being doing a serious quantity of homework. That is a fantastic set of questions, the sort of thing I would be asking if I was signing off the implementation. The problem is that this close to an election there has to be an attack strategy behind it.
Perhaps the plan is to declare it buggered, claim abolishing it will save a load of cash and then spend the nominal cash on a popular policy like sorting out vocational training.
I'd like to think she is doing exactly as you describe TE ..... but nothing that has happened so far convinces me of it, sadly. And I really don't see why she can't be forensic and human at the same time. Her arguments would carry much more weight if she was able to do both ... and why risk (well not exactly 'risk' anymore as it has pretty much happened) alienating so many groups and individuals affected by the evil and counter productive policies of IDS? She needs to carry those people with her so she can have credibility and productive dialogue with them if Labour are elected to government ....
Editing to add: Yes, I agree she's obviously been doing some homework and they are good, penetrating questions.
Yes, they are good questions.
No, I remain unimpressed.
Why?
Because she says this - "These meetings confirmed to me that the principle of Universal Credit that could bring real benefits to claimants, communities, and taxpayers" - and that's where is she is utterly wrong.
The principle of a universal standard benefit is a good one; the idea of a citizens income is even better; but Universal Credit is none of those things and is, as I know having read all the legislation and guidance, guaranteed to NOT bring any "real benefits" to claimants and thus the communities in which they live. Whether it will ever bring any benefit to the taxpayer is looking increasingly unlikely.
The six separate payments rolled into UC are those which affect only the sick, unemployed, and working poor. All the other bits and bobs in the benefit system remain largely intact, if harder to claim and becoming worth less as time goes on.
The alleged projected savings (claimed by DWP to be £35 Billion), if they ever happen, will involve loss to claimants - nobody else.
There is nowhere else for the saving to come from.
UC has been dogged by problems; the system is rubbish; the premise is flawed; the expense is astronomical; seven bosses so far; hundreds of millions wasted on fiddling about and a thing called a reset: on and on it goes, and the roll-out is years behind schedule.
People are right to be worried - all the current ESA/IB/IS/JSA/tax Credit/Housing Benefit claimants, some 9 million people and rising, will all be on this system and they will all be subject to conditions and sanctions. It's obvious where this is going.
Reeves is god - as TE suggests - at "forensics". She's a bean-counter by trade, and that's what you'd expect. But this is not going to achieve anything, even if IDS bothers to read it.
Labour may well be playing a long game on various policies or whatever - but on this I am running out of patience. Again and again we get this faffing about and at no point is there a single front-bench Labour politician who will rip Tory policy to shreds - they will not get rid of ESA, they will "reform" the WCA, they are silent on PIP, they "support the principle" of UC...... assuming they know what it is.
Not good enough. Sorry.
I'm so cross my spelling's gone to pot. Rachel Reeves is manifestly not god.
