https://www.trussell.org.uk/our-work/changing-policy/inquiry
In 2023 the Work and Pensions Select Committee carried out an inquiry into benefit levels in the UK. The final report pointed to “a wide range of evidence which suggests that benefit levels are too low, and that claimants are often not able to afford daily living costs”. Their recommendations included the government setting out a benchmark for income-replacement benefits, reviewing the extent to which current levels are meeting this benchmark and setting out a plan to reach it. They also noted that the government’s “decision making might be assisted by independent advice”. These recommendations, including the use of independent advice, are similar to those made by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Trussell in their proposal for an Essentials Guarantee for Universal Credit and by the APPG on Poverty and Inequality in their 2023 inquiry into the adequacy of social security benefits.
In the Pathways to Work Green Paper, the Department for Work & Pensions itself acknowledged that a “series of benefit freezes and benefit increases at a lower rate than inflation has left the value of the [Universal Credit] standard allowance at a 40 year low by the early 2020s, contributing to hardship and destitution”, and that the “value of the standard allowance (or its pre-UC equivalent) has fallen from around 40% of full time earnings at the minimum wage at the turn of the century to less than 25% of the same at the National Living Wage today”. As we reach the end of the transition to Universal Credit, this inquiry team believe it is therefore the right time to explore the feasibility and potential merits of using independent advice to improve how the levels of financial support offered by Universal Credit are determined.
The current UK government committed in their manifesto to review Universal Credit so that it “makes work pay and tackles poverty” and to “end the mass dependence on emergency food parcels”. This inquiry intends to produce insights and recommendations to guide these ambitions.