Welfare Reform pledges from the key Parties

These are the welfare reform pledges made by the key political parties in their manifesto's for the December 2019 general election:
 

CONSERVATIVE
 

• Continue to protect the vulnerable.
• Increase benefits in line with inflation from April 2020.
• “Instead of playing politics with the incomes of the lowest-paid, Conservatives will get Brexit done, level up the country and address the cost of living across it.“

LABOUR
 

• Scrap Universal Credit and introduce an emergency package of reforms.
• Immediately stop moving people onto UC.
• Guarantee a minimum standard of living.
• Make housing cost payments directly to landlords.
• Remove the five week wait.
• Introduce an interim payments based on half an estimated monthly entitlement.
• Introduce fortnightly payments.
• Suspend the current sanctions regime.
• Ensure that employment support is positive, not punitive.
• Scrap the Benefit Cap.
• Scrap the Two Child Limit, so ending the ‘rape clause’.
• Pay childcare costs upfront.
• End the “digital barrier” and offer telephone, face to face and outreach support (recruiting 5000 additional advisers).
• Scrap the Bedroom Tax.
• Increase the Local Housing Allowance.
• Increase Employment and Support Allowance by £30 per week for those in the work-related activity group.
• Raise the basic rate of support for children with disabilities to the level of Child Tax Credits.
• Ensure that severely disabled people without a formal carer receive extra support to enable them to meet the extra costs they inevitably face.
• Increase Carer’s Allowance to the level of the Jobseeker’s Allowance.
• Abolish PIP assessments.
• Abolish work capability assessments.
• Stop Pension Age rises beyond 66.

LIB DEM
 

• Reduce the wait for the first payment of UC from five weeks to five days.
• Remove the Two Child Limit.
• Remove the Benefits Cap.
• Increase work allowances and introducing a second earner work allowance.
• Establish a legal right to food
• Reform Universal Credit to be more supportive of the self-employed.
• Increase Local Housing Allowance in line with average rents in an area.
• Abolish the Bedroom Tax and introduce positive incentives for people to downsize.
• Separate employment support from benefits administration.
• Introduce an incentive-based scheme to replace the current sanctions system.
• Reverse the cuts to Employment Support Allowance for those in the work-related activity group.
• End Work Capability Assessments and replace them with a new system that is run by local authorities and based on real-world tests.
• Reinstate the Independent Living Fund.
• Overhaul the Bereavement Allowance to give more support and to extend it to unmarried couples when a parent dies.
• Ensure that the women born in the 1950s are properly compensated for not being notified of changes to the state pension age.
• Address inequalities in pensions law for those in same-sex relationships.
• Use the principles of Individual Placement and Support to provide the help needed by people with mental health conditions.

GREEN
 

• Phase in (by 2025) a Universal Basic Income – an unconditional financial payment to everyone at a level above their subsistence needs. It will be paid to everyone unconditionally without regard to employment status.
• Replace UC and JSA (and “a large range of variously means-tested benefits” with the UBI.
• The UBI would be (initially) £89 per week for working age people, with extra for families; or £178 a week for pensioners.
• UBI for families would be: For families with an income of under £50,000 per year - an additional supplement of £70 per week for each of their first two children and a further £50 per week for each additional child.
• Families with an income of over £50,000 per year will receive smaller additional supplements per child, with the amount decreasing further the more a family earns.
• Finance this by reforms to Income Tax to ensure the wealthiest are taxed on their full wealth, not just income; make up the balance with a Carbon Tax

SNP
 

• Tackle the five-week delay in getting a payment.
• Scrap the benefits freeze.
• Lead the fight against the Two Child Limit on tax credits and the associated rape clause.
• Establish the Best Start Grant.
• Introduce the Scottish Child Payment.
• Call for UK child poverty targets.
• Establish a UK Poverty and Inequality Commission.
• Call for the UK government to match their £10 a week Child Payment.