If you're not already aware, it takes a minimum of 5 weeks to process a Universal Credit application before receiving any form of financial assistance. This wait time is causing the 1/7 households in Liverpool currently using the service to choose between having no income for necessities or face running into debt. To try and tackle this issue the Government introduced 'Budgeting Advance Loans’ which would give claimants access to money during the 5 week assessment period but deduct any payouts from future instalments. This cruel initiative makes claimants - 52% of which in the Liverpool City Region are due to receive less support after migrating from the previous legacy benefit system - choose between having no immediate money or not enough in the future. In 2019, the Department of Work & Pensions admitted that in the first 5 years of Universal Credit being rolled out 17,070 claimants died after registering a claim but prior to the DWP making a decision on the aid they would receive, that equates to an estimated 9 deaths per day. In the same time period there was a 6.6% rise in psychological distress in the unemployed and 33.3% of Universal Credit recipients were likely to have become clinically depressed. To put the 5 week support impediment into perspective, the below scenarios reflect the minimum time it takes for the DWP to decide the outcome of a new Universal Credit claim:

I personally don't have any comprehensive answers or blanket solutions on how to improve the UK’s welfare state, but as one of the 550,000 16 - 24 year olds currently relying on the £342.72 monthly allowance the system offers young adults - £242.28 less than the average rent in Liverpool for a 1 bedroom flat - what I can say is that it doesn’t offer basic subsistence and is failing the people that depend on it massively. It was uncomfortable enough as a young male with little to no responsibilities beyond himself to survive those 5 weeks, luckily I have a network of incredible people around me that helped me without even needing to be asked. What I don't have is a young family, an elderly parent under my guardian or a mental illness that prevents me from searching for suitable work and this delay in already insufficient support accompanied by the merciless fit-to-work assessments adopted by the DWP once you do eventually sign on is literally killing people and this is what needs to be addressed. The fact there are deaths from suicide and starvation directly associated to DWP’s handling of cases and the cut-throat internal guidelines of Universal Credit is mind-numbing. David Brown (18), Elaine Morrall (38), Errol Graham (57), Phillip Heron (34) and Brian Sycamore (62) are just a number of reported deaths since 2016 that could have been avoided if the system showed any level of solicitude. Instead, it seems the UK is recklessly heading into a similar state of affairs that was highlighted in the 1980 documentary ‘Death on the Dole’ which called attention to the Thatcher Government and the correlation between 20% of the UK being out of work and the highest reported suicide rate for both males and females the UK has seen in the last 40 years.

Easier access, quicker access, and compassion. These are the focal points that Thérèse Coffey should have set out for Universal Credit to achieve when she joined the cabinet as the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in September 2019 but when Thérèse joined another 322 Tories in voting against feeding the 4,000,000 children currently living in poverty (Free School Meals Motion) during the first recession in 11 years and the worst global pandemic in 112 years, the reality of these basic expectations being implemented into the service that is meant to protect those same children and their families seems to be nothing more than a pipe dream.