Sunak acts like his benefits crackdown impacts the whole UK – but it’s far messier than that

You can tell a general election is coming. In the last fortnight alone, we’ve seen a succession of announcements on ‘welfare’ as Rishi Sunak seeks to mobilise harsh rhetoric, underpinned by punitive policy pledges, to win him support at the polls.

As well as committing to keep the two-child limit, a poverty-producing policy, which harms children simply because they are born into a family with two or more other children, Sunak has commenced an all-out assault on disabled people.

He promises that his Conservatives will rip up a so-called sick note culture, reform the work capability assessment to ensure less people are found to have limited capability for work, and overhaul the support provided by personal independence payments (PIP), with a focus on limiting support for those with what is being described as ‘mild’ mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety.

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So far, so familiar. There is a long and shameful history of politicians weaponising welfare on the assumption that a tough, divisive rhetoric is a vote winner. And it has been unsurprising to see the media pick up on the announcements, especially given the millions who would be affected were they to be implemented.

But what this focus on Westminster politics all too often suggests is that the UK has one, unified social security system, when, in fact, this has not been the case for some time. Processes of devolution and localisation married with an increased use of discretion in social security policy means that an individual’s experiences of and entitlement to social security may differ markedly depending on where in the UK they live.

Take the current furore over disability benefits. While Sunak can promise to reform PIP, this will not affect claimants in Scotland who are instead entitled to claim new, devolved benefits: the adult and child disability payments.

There are also discernible differences in how a focus on encouraging people into work, backed up by a threat of sanctions, is applied in practice. In Northern Ireland, for example, there is a focus on avoiding sanctions wherever possible, with the Department for Communities there seeing part of its remit as trying to advise individuals on what is needed to keep to the conditions of their benefits receipt (what might be called a minimise-sanctions approach).

Devolved differences exist at both the national country level, as well as regionally and locally. Here, the increasing use of discretionary, crisis support has led to a patchwork of provision across the UK, which includes support deserts, as well as varying reliance on grants, cash-based and services support.

Most recently, a six-month extension of the household support fund provides localised support to those in crisis in England, but this support will vary greatly depending on which local authority you live in, while residents elsewhere in the UK are more likely to receive support via non-repayable grant.

While the UK’s devolution of social security has gone largely unnoticed (it is not the most engaging topic of conversation, admittedly), it is having real and often substantive impacts on the support a family receives. For example, families in England and Wales are affected by the benefit cap,  meaning they can be left with as little as £22,000 to live on, regardless of household size and level of housing costs.

But this cap is mitigated in Scotland and Northern Ireland, ensuring that families in these countries will not have their income arbitrarily capped. In addition, Scottish families on a low-income now receive  additional child-based support through the Scottish Child Payment, entitling them to £25 per child per week. These devolved policy choices inevitably map onto significant differences in the support families receive depending on where in the UK they live.

The relationship between devolution and social security is a live political issue, with the last month alone seeing calls for greater devolution of Department for Work and Pensions budgets to the regional level from Greater Manchester’s mayor, Andy Burnham, and Northern Ireland’s anti-poverty community lobbying their assembly to mitigate the two-child limit.

Labour have also promised to look at greater devolution of employment support if elected at Westminster at the next election, and there is sustained interest from Wales in strengthening the Welsh Government’s devolved powers in this domain.

Much more needs to be done to understand the extent, nature and impact of differences in social security design and delivery. We need to explore the drivers of these differences and learn lessons from comparing these differences about which approaches are most effective in providing support to families through our social security systems. Working in collaboration with seven universities and national charity Child Poverty Action Group and think tank the Resolution Foundation, we are setting out on a major programme of research to do just that.

Rishi Sunak may speak as if his social security policy pledges will affect the whole of the UK, but devolution means that this is not always the case. We need to look beyond Westminster, both in search of a more ‘compassionate’ approach to social security, but also to better understand place-based differences in an individual’s experience of and entitlement to ‘welfare’.

Ruth Patrick is a professor in social policy at the University of York.

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