Save our Safety Net

New research published last week by the TUC reveals the future impact and scale of a controversial new welfare reform – the five-week wait – on workers in the North East, with 16,113 newly unemployed people set to be hit each month.

Currently, most workers who lose their job have to wait two weeks before they get their first benefit payment. But under new Universal Credit rules for assessing unemployment claims, most people will face a wait of more than five weeks before they get any money.

For many this could mean going two months into rent arrears before any cash support arrives. The DWP’s own analysis suggests that the measure may well increase claimants’ reliance on short-term loans. Some people have it bad already and wait 4 weeks for JSA – longer sometimes with errors and delays – one of the main reasons people end up at food banks. This change can only exacerbate the problem.

Across the UK, almost 300,000 will be hit each month by the five-week wait. Despite this, recent polling by YouGov for the TUC has revealed that fewer than one in seven people (13 per cent) say they have heard of the plans. Seven out of ten people (70 per cent) say that they would be worried when asked to imagine losing their job and not being entitled to receive any benefit payments for five weeks.

The TUC’s new research reveals the monthly average number of newly unemployed people broken down by region, local authority and constituency. This indicates how many people can be expected to be hit by the five-week wait when Universal Credit replaces workers’ current safety net benefits. It shows that since 2008 there are an average of 7,247 new jobseekers across Tyne and Wear each month, 4,544 across the Tees Valley, 2,817 within County Durham and 1,505 across Northumberland.

The TUC has launched our new campaign, Saving Our Safety Net, to raise awareness about the five-week wait and other welfare reforms that cut safety net protection for working people.

The North East has the highest unemployment rate in the country and people here have been hit hard by both the financial crash and this government’s economic policies. Social security is needed more than ever to provide a vital safety net but these changes risk driving even more people into poverty and debt. A five week wait until receiving jobseekers allowance punishes the unemployed and their families and benefits those who prey on the vulnerable and desperate, such as loan sharks and high cost lenders.

Conservative and Liberal Democrats ministers are either clueless or heartless when it comes to understanding unemployment, yet this is an experience that 16,000 people in the North East go through every month. We are launching the Saving Our Safety Net campaign to expose the government’s plans for what they are – cuts to the National Insurance safety net we’ve all paid into, on the proviso that it will be there when we need it.

Beth Farhat
Northern TUC Regional Secretary