The announcement by the government in the Daily Mail here (didn’t there use to be Parliament and Hansard?) talks only about JSA and Housing Benefit. 

This proposal will, presumably, need to be carried into Universal Credit as well.  That should help with the increasing simplicity of the scheme.  There are a few questions about the way in which that will affect the Universal Credit system. Perhaps it will be simple enough to remove the housing element from the needs calculation but that will trigger the higher band of ‘work allowances’, the equivalent of the current higher earnings disregard.  The two bands of work allowances mean that people who have no housing costs in their Universal Credit calculation are allowed to keep more of their earnings before their Universal Credit is reduced.

The two bands are the same for people without children or disabilities, so the initial single childless claims for Universal Credit won’t be affected, but, under the ‘lobster pot’ policy, people whose circumstances change, such as having a child, will remain on Universal Credit and then the effects will kick-in. How long before the Daily Mail starts pointing out that immigrants are getting more than UK citizens?

There are though mutterings about the ‘lobster pot’ at the moment. Given the problems with the IT and manual systems for Universal Credit, there is a circle to be squared. If the IT can’t cope with the more complex sets of circumstances, that will inevitably develop from the original simple claims, then those will have to be dealt with manually. Clerically administering increasing numbers of increasingly complex cases introduces huge problems given reducing numbers of staff in the DWP and all the training and support needs that would arise (although we’re happy to sell them calculation and review systems). The alternative seems to be emptying out the lobster pot and moving people back onto the current benefits that can cater for those circumstances… but that introduces a huge new set of administrative, and legal, problems and what does that do for simplification?