May urged to halt implementation of Universal Credit scheme
A former top adviser to four Prime Ministers, including Theresa May, has urged the PM that if she insisted on moving ahead with her plan to implement her Universal Credit benefit scheme many Britons could be left homeless and destitute.
Dame Louise Casey implored May to halt the roll-out of her new benefits system until "dire" issues within the programme could be rectified, as a dozen Tory MP's wrote to pensions secretary David Gauke asking him to do the same.
Downing Street said the system, which would see six existing benefits merged into one, offered support and that budgeting and financial help was available, but Casey said she saw potentially catastrophic impacts to families living "close to the edge."
"I completely agree that we all should be wedded to the principle, and therefore the overall policy, that work should pay," she told the BBC.
However, she added that "If it means that we are looking at more and more people that are ending up homeless, or ending up having their kids taken away, or ending up in more dire circumstances, that cannot be the intention."
"It can't be and it won't be the intention of Theresa May or Damian Green or any of those people. I just don't believe that they would want that to happen."
According to figures released by the Department of Work and Pensions, roughly one out of every four new people on Universal Credit benefits were forced to wait more than six weeks to receive their first payments, which Casey said would end up in circumstances "more dire than I think we have seen in this country for years."