The government’s tin ear has undermined the triumph of Universal Credit

So the government has finally worked out that it isn’t a good idea to charge benefit-claimants 55 pence a minute to listen to piped music while they wait for someone to deal with their claim. But how ridiculous that no-one saw it coming, and that it look so long to correct a problem that should have shown up from the beginning as political dynamite. At this rate it will only be another few months before work and pensions secretary David Gauke works out, too, that making people wait six weeks for their first payment is costing the government far more politically than it is saving the Exchequer. A few months after that it just might finally click with him that it isn’t a good idea to try to make Universal Credit ‘digital by default’ when many of those making claims are, by definition, too poor to have smartphones, computers or internet connections.