Introduction

The social security system in the UK has long been regarded as overly bureaucratic and too complex for either bureaucrats or claimants to entirely understand. In 2010, the Conservative-led coalition government unveiled Universal Credit (UC) as the answer to this historic policy problem. An ambitious plan to merge six in-and outof-work benefits, UC aims to ensure not only a simpler system but also that it is more beneficial to be in work than on the dole. Entailing a huge administrative challenge, the implementation of UC has been dogged by problems from the outset; with costs spiralling and the timetable slipping, the policy was effectively ‘reset’ in 2013 and political pressure to abandon it mounted in the months that followed. Yet, 2013 proved to be a turning point. Looking into the precipice of the failure of a flagship reform, policy makers engaged in policy learning. Along with analysing the technical problems and capacity deficits they faced, civil servants learned from previous experiences of implementing complex policies and from similar problems in social security reform in Australia. Appointing senior troubleshooters responsible for getting the programme on track and engaging a recovery team – Major Projects Authority (MPA) – the UC appeared to have been turned around (see Timmins, 2016 for a full account). But such optimism was premature. Since its staggered roll-out, the Resolution Foundation think tank estimated UC will result in 3.2 million working families being worse off by an average of £48 a week. As many as 600,000 claimants are no longer entitled to any assistance at all (Finch and Gardiner, 2018). In April 2018, the Trussell Trust charity reported an average 52 per cent rise in demand for its food banks in areas where UC had been rolled out (Trussell Trust, 2018). Though reputed by government at the time, in February 2019 the sixth Secretary of State for Work and Pensions presiding over UC – Rt Hon Amber Rudd – conceded that its introduction had contributed to increased food insecurity (HC Deb, 11 February 2019, c593).