Universal Credit Roll-out

Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Simon Clarke

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I am more than happy to allow interventions, but if Members who choose to intervene want to look a colleague in the eye when that colleague drops off the list of speakers, let them do so, because that is what is going to happen.

[Mr Clarke]

In answer to the question, I would tell them that—as I would defend to anybody—this Government are creating jobs and, through their changes to taxes and benefits, making life better.

The fact that I have been elected to serve my constituency shows that people in Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland see through what the Opposition are trying to do. They talk of a pause, but instead they are in effect asking for indefinite delay and the slow death of this policy. That is the reality of what we are seeing here. They talk a good game about supporting the principle, but in reality they oppose it. They should be more open with us and their constituents about that, because the legacy of the last Labour Government was shameful. The real moral outrage was the thousands of people who ended up being trapped on out-of-work benefits for the entire course of the last decade of Labour’s time in office, and it did nothing about it.

We are offering the solutions. We are listening and learning, and making changes—consider the advance payments, consider the alternative payment methods, consider the landlord portal. Ministers are listening. This system is capable of reform. No system is perfect; given the challenge we are confronting here, I do not believe any system could be perfect. The point is whether this system is capable of improvement, and it is. The Government are listening, and we should get behind them, make this work and stop scaring our constituents with stories which will cause many of them to lose sleep tonight, not to look for work.