“Designing in Dignity”: Principles for change in the social security system
- Area of Work: Policy and Research
- Type: News Item
- Published: 31st July 2024
A new paper by SCoRSS sets out the key principles to guide the new UK Government and Parliament to a more dignified social security system.
Following the election of a new UK Parliament at the start of July, the Scottish Campaign on Rights to Social Security (SCoRSS) have published a paper setting out their key priorities for the new UK Government. The “Designing in Dignity” paper, which the ALLIANCE contributed to, emphasises that social security is a public service and a basic human right that should secure the wellbeing of everyone in society.
However, in recent years changes to the UK’s social security system have moved away from these principles. It is not right that access to and experience of social security are affected by deeply ingrained inequalities that mean that groups including women, children, disabled people and terminally ill people are disproportionality affected by insecurity and exclusion.
The paper puts forward a range of principles and policies that should underpin the delivery of social security, and calls on the new UK Government to deliver the real change required to achieve this vision. The specific policy calls in the paper include:
- Improving the adequacy of social security payments.
- Abolishing the two-child limit, the benefit cap, the bedroom tax, and the young parent penalty.
- Removing the five-week wait for Universal Credit and introducing individual payments.
- Scrap the changes proposed to the Work Capability Assessment and Personal Independence Payment by the previous government.
- End punitive conditionality.
You can read the full paper via the resource link below.
SCoRSS (formerly Scottish Campaign on Welfare Reform) was formed in 2006 to highlight the concerns of a diverse coalition of organisations in Scotland about the then UK Government’s welfare reform proposals. Since then, the coalition has informed debates on changes to both UK and Scottish Government policy and directly influenced the development of the Scottish Social Security System.
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