David Gauke seems unaware of his own rules (Letters, 21 December). The government’s website states that single parents with a child under five years old should not be transferred to universal credit, but he implies that the mother cited in his letter received her payment through this system. His local officials in Slough were also ignorant of this directive when they did just such a transfer to UC in the case of a single mother with a one-year-old. She was indeed paid a sum to cover Christmas, which amounted to 30p! The transfer to UC has now been cancelled after representations, but no money will be forthcoming till 29 December, if then. This saga has been going on since mid-October and she and her child would have starved without support from friends, local churches and the food bank. This is not scaremongering but hard evidence that the whole system and those administering it are callous or incompetent or both.
John Wilding
Slough, Berkshire
• Clearly David Gauke, secretary of state for work and pensions, is entering the Marie Antoinette phase of government if he thinks an advance payment of £688 is generous for a single mother of two. Even in Wirral this is going to cover little more than her rent, so in areas with higher housing costs people will still be left without any money over Christmas. Rather than accepting that millions of low-paid people still get paid weekly or fortnightly (or are self-employed, often with seasonal work), thegovernment ploughed on with making monthly payments for universal credit, something which has all the flexibility of a supertanker.
These days, Theresa May would tell the holy family that they were not homeless over Christmas, because they are not sleeping on the streets (May accused of ‘callousness’ over plight of homeless families, 20 December). Highly profitable private temporary accommodation is no place to bring children up for months on end, at far greater public expense and squalor than providing decent social housing.
David Nowell
New Barnet, Hertfordshire
• Perhaps David Gauke should pause in his extolling of the wonders of universal credit and consider the effect of the recovery of £688. The payment solves one problem and causes another. Even over the newly proposed period of 12 months, that is more than £50 per month. For someone “just managing”, that is a lot of money. A more flexible approach could forestall a more expensive crisis, with the likely casualty being the payment of rent. And that is a downward spiral.
Veronica Puddicombe
Plymouth
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