Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Sherlock and Baroness Campbell of Surbiton

Monday 10th October 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I have little to add to the rather remarkable contribution made by my noble friend Lady Lister, but I want to address a couple of points.

First, I was delighted to see the DWP research report, Perceptions of Welfare Reform and Universal Credit, and I commend the Minister and the department for taking this kind of research so seriously. The foreword to that report says:

“The Department for Work and Pensions … is committed to involving users throughout the development of Universal Credit, from setting out the criteria for a good experience to detailed design decisions. This user involvement helps ensure issues are known, understood and mitigated as the Universal Credit system is being built”.

I want to commend that. I thought it was a very good decision. However, it means that if you ask people and they give you answers, it really is wise to listen to them. Having sought the opinion of those who are going to be using the system, and having been told so clearly that only a small minority appreciated monthly payments as a route and the majority clearly felt it was a problem, is the Minister at all persuaded by that?

I have two other points to add. I am particularly concerned about the impact on those who are in that territory between work and out of work. The most compelling argument made today was the fact that if only half those people are paid monthly at the moment, the whole idea that moving to monthly payments mimics work simply falls flat. If people are currently paid weekly or fortnightly, they could be in the bizarre position of having their wages paid weekly or monthly and their universal credit paid monthly, which seems ridiculous. At the moment with tax credits people can opt to be paid weekly.

I declare an interest as having been involved in advising Ministers on the design of tax credits, as noble Lords will know. I can understand the desire of the centre to want to simplify this. I really understand why having everybody on monthly payments would be an awful lot easier for the process, as well as the design problems in terms of processing capacity of having people opt into a variety of options. However, this feels so important that if the noble Lord is so committed—and I know he is—to the aims of universal credit in supporting people in work and to getting the architecture right, it would seem that this is a fairly fundamental piece of the architecture, and we get it wrong at our peril.

I have one final point. I spent some years working with single parents. Most of them had come out of relationships or marriages. One of the things that they always said they liked about being single—there were many things they did not like that were very hard—was that they could control the money. I heard many of them describe the struggles that they had had to protect the money coming into the household and to have it spent on the children. They described a whole range of situations that I am not in any way suggesting are typical, but they are none the less not invisible or irrelevant either. Some said that they quite often had a situation where their partners would periodically go out on a binge and spend the money. There were people who had quite a bit of money who would say: “I fed the children on child benefit till they got back”.

One thing about credits being paid directly to them and coming in weekly was that at least they knew there was another payment coming along soon. If in this situation one partner spends the money unwisely, it is an awful long wait until the next payment comes in. Would the Minister consider that alongside some of the later issues we are going to discuss about the Social Fund and single payments being made only to one partner or to a joint account? This is an area of which the Minister would be well advised to take careful consideration.

[Baroness Campbell of Surbiton]

My Lords, I would also like to support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and congratulate her on her first amendment. What a good first amendment. Disability charities, including the full membership of the Disability Benefits Consortium, have expressed grave concerns to me that many disabled claimants, particularly those with mental health problems or learning disabilities, will struggle to manage their budgeting over monthly intervals. With the proposed replacement of the discretionary Social Fund and by confusing an unpredictable plethora of local schemes, accessing crisis payment when budgeting problems arise will be very hard for this group of people also.

I support a man with mild learning and behavioural difficulties. He can just about manage his two-weekly payments and often, at the end of the two weeks, it is up to his friends—normally me—to sub him until the end of that two-week period. I have no idea how he will manage on a monthly basis. He falls under the radar of most help and I know that he would not seek it anywhere but me. So it also puts a burden on families, friends and other poor relatives who are often in the same situation to make up the shortfall. I support the noble Baroness and would like to know what the Minister has in mind for this particular group of people to cope with a monthly payment.