Labour to overhaul Universal Credit

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has announced plans to overhaul Universal Credit and replace it with a social security system that focuses on “alleviating and ending poverty, not driving people into it”.

He says that if Labour gets into government, it will immediately end the benefit cap and the two-child limit, suspend the sanctions regime, which it says has pushed people into poverty and reliance on food banks, end Universal Credit’s “digital only” requirement and switch to split payments and fortnightly payments, including an automatic interim payment to end the five-week wait for benefits.

Corbyn says Labour will also replace the Department for Work and Pensions with a Department for Social Security, which he says would mark a radical shift from a system that “punishes and polices” people to one where social security will support people in finding work and treat them with “dignity and respect”.

of thousands of children out of poverty by scrapping the two child limit and benefit cap. The pernicious five week wait which causes so much misery and suffering will go. We will suspend the Tories’ pernicious sanctions regime, introduce fortnightly payments, make payments directly to landlords and protect women by making split payments by default, and never again will any woman have to fill in a four page form to prove her child was born as a result of rape.”

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