Category: Welfare Reform

By Posted on Posted in Campaigns, Resources, Universal Credit, Welfare Reform

NAWRA has sent a formal response to the Work and Pensions Committee Universal credit update inquiry.  Thank you to all the members who responded to our request for information – your help has been invaluable, as always. NAWRA has serious concerns about Universal Credit – in particular as the full service rolls out.  We have called for a range of changes to be implemented if the full rollout is to have a chance of success.  These include: Allowing alternative payment arrangements …

Universal Credit inquiry Read more »

By Posted on Posted in PIP, Press release, Welfare Reform

NAWRA issued the following press release on Friday 3rd March 2017: The government has announced shock plans to restrict entitlement to the disability benefit, Personal Independence Payment (PIP). The National Association of Welfare Rights Advisers (NAWRA) strongly refutes the claims made by government that two recent court decisions (1) in any way ‘extend’ or ‘broaden’ the meaning of the PIP regulations as claimed by government. In fact the judges simply seek to confirm the original policy intent of the DWP …

NAWRA condemns backdoor cuts to PIP Read more »

By Posted on Posted in Basic Income, Committee, Welfare Reform Tagged with , ,

Eri Mountbatten, our North Wales elected representative on the NAWRA committee, writes about the concept of a basic (or citizens) income: What is basic (or citizens) income? For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, the central and arguably well founded assumption is that the current welfare system is broken.  It demoralises those most vulnerable in society and creates artificial barriers to individual and societal progress by keeping welfare claimants in the so-called ‘poverty-trap’. Proponents suggest that in order to …

A Basic Income in the UK – ‘what’s not to like’? Read more »

By Posted on Posted in Members, Welfare Reform

Tying in with a theme of our meeting in Glasgow tomorrow, we are reproducing part of a blog by Dr Simon Duffy of the Centre for Welfare Reform. (Reproduced with kind permission of the author.) “Although the idea of Basic Income has been around for at least two and a half thousand years, it is still unfamiliar to most people in modern Britain. However it is an idea whose time has come. Currently only the Green Party is officially championing …

Basic Income – the modern form of Social Security Read more »

By Posted on Posted in Campaigns, ESA, PIP, Welfare Reform Tagged with , , , ,

NAWRA welcomes the recent announcement from the new Secretary of State for Work & Pensions, Stephen Crabb MP, to abandon further cuts to PIP. NAWRA hopes that his promises not to seek “alternative offsetting savings” in this Parliament will also be honoured. Let us not forget however that according to recent research by the Centre for Welfare Reform, vulnerable and disabled citizens have been the “number one target for cuts”.  Indeed the present and former Governments have already presided over …

Welfare Reform and disability Read more »