Universal Credit

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Wednesday 21st December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking my noble friend Lord Farmer for securing this timely debate. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Macpherson, on an excellent and incisive maiden speech. The noble Lord was among the very best of officials and we all appreciated his dry wit as well as his brilliant mind. I also pay tribute to my noble friend the Minister, whose dedication and public service ethos have been beyond compare. There are few who were better qualified to be the Minister for Welfare Reform, having advised the Opposition while they were in government and the current Government while in opposition. My noble friend Lord Freud’s nearly seven years in government have seen the fruition of the universal credit programme.

Perhaps my noble friend’s greatest achievement was to help secure cross-party support for the policy of universal credit. Previous Governments ducked the challenge of implementing such an ambitious programme and certainly more than one official told me that it simply could not be done. It would be fair to say that there were issues with, and glitches in, its implementation during the coalition Government. However, the fact that the policy itself enjoyed full political support was crucial. The implementation and rollout of universal credit posed enormous challenges for which the Department for Work and Pensions was unprepared and with which it was ill equipped to deal. It is to the enormous credit of my noble friend the Minister, my right honourable friend the former Secretary of State Iain Duncan Smith, and my noble friend Lady Stroud that they persevered in the face of such difficulties.

The Public Accounts Committee report into the early progress of universal credit in 2013 was fairly damning of the “extraordinarily poor management” of the programme and the approach of the officials responsible. Astonishingly, the department was first alerted to the problems due to,

“concerns raised in a supplier-led review, commissioned by the Secretary of State, which reported in July 2012”.

It was therefore the Secretary of State and his red team review that alerted his officials to the problems—rather than the other way around, as ought to be the case.

For this, Iain Duncan Smith deserves rightful commendation as he refused to accept the blandishments of officials who kept reassuring him that all was fine. As a result, the universal credit programme was reset, using the latest digital technology, and, as many noble Lords have explained, it is indeed starting to transform lives. I urge that the policy stays true to its original purpose and continues to carry incentives to ensure that work will always pay.

My noble friend the Minister deserves credit not only for establishing support for the universal credit policy but for his dogged determination to ensure that the policy is properly implemented. As all of us who bear the scars of government know, moving the government machine and getting things done are not easy tasks. It is remarkably hard work. To have achieved the successful implementation and rollout to date of universal credit is a tremendous achievement and formidable legacy.