Flawed Universal Credit benefit is pushing people into poverty, says Human Rights Watch

The Government’s rigid insistence on automating Universal Credit threatens the rights of people most at risk of poverty, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

Human Rights Watch is an independent, international organisation that works as part of a movement to uphold human dignity and advance the cause of human rights for all.

Its report details how a poorly designed algorithm is causing people to go hungry, fall into debt, and experience psychological distress.

The watchdog calls for a comprehensive redesign of how the government calculates Universal Credit is urgently needed to restore people’s rights to a decent standard of living, particularly as they face severe income loss and other economic shocks caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Human Rights Watch found that the government is failing to address the socioeconomic inequalities that prevent people from being able to apply for and manage their benefit online.

The predominantly digitally based benefit is also causing hardship among people who lack digital skills or cannot afford reliable internet access. Some people told Human Rights Watch that they struggled to fill out long web forms about their personal and financial circumstances, satisfy cumbersome identity verification requirements, and complete online job-seeking tasks.

Human Rights Watch also found that the means-testing algorithm at the heart of Universal Credit is flawed. But the data the government uses to measure these changes only reflects the wages people receive within a calendar month, and ignores how frequently people are paid.

If people receive multiple pay checks in one month – common among people in irregular or low-paid jobs – this can cause the algorithm to overestimate earnings and drastically shrink their payment.

In addition, claimants are also being forced to wait five weeks for their first Universal Credit payment. While they wait, they are borrowing money to cope and skimping on their basic needs. Under the previous system, people generally received their first payment within two weeks.

The full Human Rights Watch report Automated Hardship: How the Tech-Driven Overhaul of the UK’s Benefits System Worsens Poverty is available from hrw.org.