Difficulty in obtaining data from the Department for Work and Pensions has created “a significant challenge” for the official body responsible for Scotland’s economic forecasts.
A charity is demanding a major shake up in the social security system because of “shameful” shortcomings that left one and a half million people in destitution in 2017.
Welfare reform has had a substantial impact on the Scottish housing sector, with the introduction of universal credit pushing up rent arrears for social tenants, according to a report from the...
The number of Scots seeking help to pay for food and heating from a crisis fund has increased, with one in eight applications due to a delay in the payment of benefits, according to the Scottish...
The new agency set up to run devolved benefits in Scotland will not follow the example set by Whitehall’s Department of Work and Pensions in using private companies to assess the entitlement of...
The government’s flagship welfare-to-work scheme is closing next month having helped 840,000 jobseekers find work, says the body representing the employment support sector.
Labour would scrap Work Capability Assessments and the sanctions system for jobseekers as part what shadow work and pensions secretary Debbie Abrahams called a plan to change the culture of the UK’s...
Figures published by the Department for Work and Pensions today have found that around 67,000 households have had their benefits capped since the government introduced the £26,000 annual limit in...
Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers has warned that public services in the province could suffer if a deal of welfare reform is not struck, derailing the £2bn Stormont House Agreement.
There has been very little frontline progress on the delivery of the government’s Universal Credit benefit reform, despite £700m having been spent on it, the Public Accounts Committee said today.
David Cameron has said a future Conservative government would consider cutting benefits for people with conditions such as drug and alcohol addiction or obesity if they do not agree to treatment.
The government’s Universal Credit benefit system is being rolled out across the UK from today, marking the start of what work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith is calling a ‘cultural change’...
Government and councils have been urged to consider how expansion of payment-by-results systems to pay for public services can work for vulnerable people with multiple needs.
Government cuts to benefits mean total welfare spending will be £16.7bn lower by the end of the parliament than it would have been without the changes, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has found.
Low-income families with children and the very well off are the two groups that have lost the most from the coalition government’s changes to tax and benefits for working-age people, the Institute...
The UK’s unemployment rate has fallen below 6% for the first time in six years, according to figures published by the Office for National Statistics today.
Over 8 million UK families with children – more than one third – now have less than they require for a socially acceptable standard of living, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
More than a million unemployed people are receiving no government support to get back into work as they fall between cracks of different national schemes, an analysis for the Local Government...