The Executive’s failure to deliver welfare reform is “actually making many households claiming benefits worse off”, according to the Conservative Party’s North Down PPC, Mark Brotherston.
“If you look at DSD’s own figures, they expose just how ridiculous and dishonest are the arguments of parties like the SDLP and now Sinn Féin, who oppose this bill”, Mark emphasised. “Failing to implement Universal Credit is actually costing 102,000 households an average of £32 per week. These are often people who are worse off under the current system because they choose to work, which is grossly unfair. Universal Credit rewards people who go out to work, because their benefits are not withdrawn as quickly. It is fair, it is compassionate and it is working.”
“Of the 287,000 households likely to be eligible for Universal Credit, over 70% would be better off or no worse off, under the proposals in the Welfare Bill. Added to that, the experience where Universal Credit has been implemented already shows that it has encouraged substantial numbers of people to return to work. The opponents of welfare reform keep trotting out the same tired old rhetoric, but the irony is that they’re actually holding people back who could be finding jobs and making many claimants poorer. In Northern Ireland the debate has become utterly distorted and there is a desperate need to start looking at hard evidence, rather than listening to bluster and rhetoric from people who seem to want to stifle people’s potential.”