Another question to the Prime Minister today that’s worth noting came from Labour MP Danielle Rowley on Universal Credit. She was asking not about the well-known problems with the roll-out of the benefit, but about a flaw with its very design:
‘The Work and Pensions Committee heard evidence that the lack of automatic split payments for universal credit means that women are being trapped in abusive relationships. That absolutely disgusts me, but how does it make the Prime Minister feel?’
Currently, Universal Credit is paid to the household as a whole. The problem with this is when one member of a couple is abusing the other, and controlling all their finances. Financial abuse is a poorly-understood but astonishingly prevalent crime, and can take place as part of a wide range of domestic abuse including physical or sexual violence, or on its own.
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