The five-week wait for Universal Credit payments is to be maintained despite almost half a million new people applying for the benefit since the coronavirus crisis began.
Theresa Coffey, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said the Government would not ditch the delayed payment despite calls from the opposition and charities to scrap the wait.
Coffey told MPs on the work and pensions select committee: “The underlying principles of Universal Credit would remain. By that, I mean the design is meant to be based on your general income, we need a month to assess what your monthly income is likely to be.
“But, as I keep reiterating, the advances can be made to people pretty quickly. We will be sticking with that advance.”
The minister said in the last week the DWP had received about 70,000 applications for advances on UC payments.
But the DWP’s top civil servant, Peter Schofield, said it would not be possible to turn the UC advance into a grant, making it non-repayable.
He told the committee: “Yesterday, we registered 105,000 claims to Universal Credit. It’s a major success of the organisation and we did it because a lot of the system is automated, we’re not changing the way the system is working.”
Almost half a million people have applied for UC following the UK outbreak of coronavirus.
Emma Revie, chief executive of the Trussell Trust, said: “The five-week wait is already pushing people to food banks, trapping many in debt and making issues with housing, ill health, disability and domestic abuse worse.”
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