Drawing on the findings of a qualitative research study exploring the experience of working claimants on Universal Credit (UC), this new policy report by Dr Rita Griffiths and Dr Marsha Wood explores the interaction between earnings, ‘passported’ benefits and other means-tested support.

The research found that, while all participants had levels of earnings low enough to entitle them to UC, only in rare instances did UC receipt, of itself, automatically qualify them for help. Not only were application processes typically onerous and time-consuming, but many working claimants were ineligible for support due to the very low earnings thresholds which applied to most of the schemes. Others had variable earnings which meant they dipped in and out of eligibility from one month to the next. Those whose earnings rose above a certain level could find themselves financially worse off, undermining UC’s fundamental goal to ‘make work pay’. This was because the extra take home pay was often worth less than the value of the entitlements lost. These ‘cliff edges’ discouraged some people from working longer hours and earning more.

A key recommendation is for a comprehensive review to be conducted of the additional means-tested benefits, schemes and discounts that sit outside Universal Credit, exploring their interaction with earnings and their effects on work incentives and employment behaviours. This should be included as part of the review into UC and the Government’s new child poverty strategy.

The report is accompanied by a policy brief summarising the key findings and recommendations.

The research was funded by abrdn Financial Fairness Trust.

The introduction of Shared Parental Leave in the UK in April 2015 was intended to help parents share child-related responsibilities.

This policy brief, authored by Dr Joanna Clifton-Sprigg, Professor Eleonora Fichera, Professor Melanie Jones and Dr Ezgi Kaya, summarises the findings of research into the success of the Shared Parental Leave policy and makes recommendations for policy changes. The research focuses primarily on fathers as those encouraged by the policy to take up or extend leave and compares leave uptake between parents just before and after the policy introduction using large-scale nationally representative data.

This research report by Dr Rita Griffiths and Dr Marsha Wood explores how the system of monthly assessment in Universal Credit – used for assessing entitlement, recovering debts and calculating payment – is affecting income security and financial well-being in working households. The research tracked month-to-month changes in earnings and household income, in real time, between 2022 and 2023, among 61 Universal Credit (UC) claimants in 42 working households with one or two earners in paid work or self-employment. A key focus was the system of monthly assessment, in particular the monthly means test, in which the UC payment is automatically adjusted upwards or downwards based on reported changes in a household’s income in the previous month.

The research was funded by abrdn Financial Fairness Trust.

The report is accompanied by a policy brief: Working claimants navigating the ups and downs of monthly assessments in Universal Credit

This report, by Dr Andrew Weyman, Richard Glendinning, Rachel O’Hara, Dr Joanne Coster and Dr Deborah Roy, details findings from a tracking survey of NHS employee perspectives on influences on staff retention, conducted over four waves between winter 2020 and spring 2023. 

Core themes addressed were: reasons why staff stay/leave; what’s got better/worse; staff worries and concerns; confidence in the future; future work/retirement aspirations; non-NHS job seeking behaviour; strength of attachment to the NHS; and what needs to change.

Findings highlight the centrality of staffing levels relative to the demand for care as the biggest single challenge to staff resilience and retention. While the previously upward trend of staff applying for non-NHS jobs indicates some stabilisation, the all-staff rate remains at 1:7 (as high as 1:4 for some professions). Reports symptoms of burnout show rising trend and confidence in the future an increasingly negative profile. A striking finding is a 24 point drop (61% to 37%) in the proportion of staff who ‘would recommend working for the NHS to others’ between winter 2020/21 and spring 2023.

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) has become a core point of reference for university researchers. This paper, authored by Professor Graham Room, poses five questions:

• What responsibility does the researcher have for the transformations of society that follow from their research?
• How far can researchers anticipate the range of these future transformations?
• What does it entail, to engage with the wider public over these futures?
• Is RRI a responsibility for the individual researcher or necessarily an interdisciplinary endeavour?
• What are the strategic implications for universities in relation to the wider society?

Proposals for Universal Basic Income (UBI) have risen in political salience in the last decade but the policy has yet to be introduced by any national government. Governments and NGOs have designed field experiments to test the impact of policies that share many features with a UBI and researchers have produced many microsimulation studies showing that a UBI can reduce poverty with only moderate increases in taxes.

In this paper, authors Dr Joe Chrisp, Professor Nick Pearce and Professor Matteo Richiardi draw on research that suggests political actors that support UBI tend to propose incremental reforms or ‘steps’ towards a UBI as well as indicating their long-term goal. They do a microsimulation analysis of nine proposed incremental reforms in the UK that would make the social security system for working-age adults more universal, unconditional and generous. However, they do so by maintaining the existing household based Universal Credit system. They analyse the cost and distributional consequences of these reforms and briefly discuss the consequences for marginal effective tax rates.