This has meant fewer resources available to support jobseekers at a time when their chances of quick reintegration into work were weaker given the limited number of vacancies and high competition among the unemployed.
Here are the key points: THE KEY POINTS: Replaces working tax credit, child tax credit, housing benefit, income support, jobseekers' allowance and income related allowances.
Jonathan Portes is principal research fellow at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research UNIVERSAL CREDIT Replaced income support, jobseeker's allowance, employment and support allowance, housing benefit, child tax credit and working tax credit.
In a paper tabled this week, the council proposed that councils be given powers to set eligibility criteria and payment rates for all working-age benefits within the county, including income support, jobseeker's allowance and employment support allowance.
Asked which benefits the chancellor had included in his claim, the Treasury said the chancellor was looking very specifically at working-age welfare payments, including housing benefit, income support, jobseeker's allowance and employment support allowance (which was only introduced in 2009).
Since 2006, its means-tested NHS Healthy Start programme has provided vouchers for milk and fresh and frozen fruit and vegetables to eligible pregnant women and families with children under four (those on low incomes who qualify for income support, jobseeker's allowance, employment and support allowance or child tax credits).
Those who pass the test can claim housing benefit, council tax benefit, access to local authority housing, income support, Jobseeker's Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance.
A better approach is to work with employers to create jobs with a long term future and then support the jobseeker into them while they get going".
In total that meant the British taxpayer was supporting a typical EU jobseeker with £600 a month.
It made joblessness more painful but provided more support for jobseekers.
