Universal Credit ‘May Be Scrapped After Next Election’

The future of the Government’s major £2bn welfare reform has been thrown into fresh doubt after it emerged that just a handful of claimants have been enrolled into the new system.  The DWP disclosed that only 3,200 people had been signed up to receive Universal Credit – a fraction of the original target – at a cost of nearly £200,000 per person. The figure emerged amid claims the next government could be forced to pull the plug on Universal Credit. Under the original timetable, 1 million people would be receiving the payment by April, rising to 1.7 million a year later. But the DWP admitted that only 3,200 had been enrolled for Universal Credit by the end of November, nearly all of them as part of a pilot scheme. The vast majority are young single jobseekers, the least complicated category of claimant. Read more on the Independent website.