Why are people so afraid of Universal Credit?
Beyond Today
BBC
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 20 November 2018
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Concern over Universal Credit has been bubbling away for well over a year now as it's slowly rolled out across the country. The first thing the new Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd said about the programme she took over this week is that it "can be better" and that she’ll listen to people’s concerns. John Owen from the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme tells us why it all seems to be going wrong. Producers: Heidi Pett and Georgia Coan Editor: John Shields
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:05.8 | Hello, I'm Matthew Price with Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4, |
| 0:09.6 | where we ask one big question about one big story every day. |
| 0:13.0 | Today why are people so afraid of university? |
| 0:17.0 | Today why are people so afraid of Universal Credit? |
| 0:27.0 | In some ways it really is the biggest story of the moment. The media has a tendency to |
| 0:39.4 | focus obsessively on Donald Trump and on Brexit and on Jeremy Corbyn's position in the |
| 0:47.0 | Labour Party and one thing that does tend to slip through the gaps is Universal Credit |
| 0:50.8 | but it's really difficult to overstate the scale of this reform which is the biggest |
| 0:55.5 | shake-up to welfare in a generation. |
| 0:58.8 | Hi my name's Alexandra Cholten I'm 20 years old I'm from Gainesborough, Lincolnshire. I currently claim |
| 1:05.4 | Universal Credit but because of the way Universal Credit is set up I was paid twice in one assessment period. So despite the |
| 1:16.0 | fact these were two separate pay dates to make me survive two separate months. |
| 1:20.1 | They didn't pay my rent meaning. I had 880 pounds odd to survive for two months when my rent is |
| 1:29.4 | 425 for two months and that's not |
| 1:35.0 | doesn't even begin to describe bills and groceries. |
| 1:35.7 | It just doesn't work out. |
| 1:37.6 | Like that's not something I can survive on. |
| 1:41.7 | My mental health was sent into an absolute spiral when I was told originally that the |
| 1:47.0 | because I thought it was a mistake I went into rectify it with bank statements and they told me that the decision would stand. |
| 1:53.0 | I had to be pulled out of the woods by my partner because I was intent on committing suicide. |
| 1:59.0 | Not long after that, I had to go back in because there was a discretionary housing |
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