Universal Credit Regulations 2013

Debate between Lord Bishop of Worcester and Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

I am grateful to my noble friend for that advice which I will try to take into account. As always it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. Her speeches repay careful study and I am sure that colleagues will do that. I yield to no one in the pleasure I get from reading social security regulations. Nothing makes my weekend more than a wet towel around my head and a glass of malt whisky in my hand, but I will make my first plea to the Minister a simple one: can we have August off this year? The consultative process has consulted me all out, so I am just going to make some general remarks about what I think we need to watch out for carefully in these regulations.

I am absolutely supportive of the general political direction of these reforms, but they are very ambitious, so we have to be careful about how we implement them. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, was also correct to say that whether we like it or not, the financial austerity we are experiencing may prejudice the outcome of what I think is an essential and necessary architectural change. We have to be careful that we do not spoil the public’s understanding of what is trying to be achieved here in the short term. I know the Minister is alive to that but we need to continue to be alive to it.

These regulations put us in a position of having fewer unknown unknowns, but there are still quite a lot of known unknowns. The question that I really want to ask more than anything else this evening is a process one, about how we can be sure that we use the expertise in this House and, indeed, some of its self-confessed non-expertise. The latter is just as effective, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said, and the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Eden, was very refreshing and welcome in that regard. We in this House need to be sure that we have an ongoing and positive relationship that allows us to encourage the Government to continue to be flexible in the roll-out of this programme. It will take 10 years to get to a steady state in universal credit and for it to be really bedded in so that people are comfortable about it. We must hasten slowly to get the introduction of this policy correct.

I am very pleased that the Social Security Advisory Committee is so engaged. I remember getting quite a long look down a ministerial nose when I suggested that this might happen. However, to be fair to the Minister, he does listen and changed his mind. The SSAC report gives me more comfort than I would otherwise have had, so I thank him for that, as I do for some of the other flexibilities he has introduced. He has to persuade his ministerial colleagues, some of them in other departments, that some flexibility needs to be retained. Unless we do that, we will prejudice the implementation of this very important new area of public policy.

It is quite difficult to get the balance right with the next thing I want to say to the Minister. I believe what he says to me and understand that the Government’s position is that the digital implementation—the agile computing process that has been deployed in this case, which is new, innovative and gives us better functionality, in theory—is all on track and that everything is under control. I have to say to him that that is not the signal that I am getting from sources close to the development of the project who are not Ministers. It is so important to make sure that we get the computer-based system—not just the digital application process but the underlying framework of ICT provision—to work. I believe it can be done but am very nervous about the timetable—a point that I think was made by the Delegated Legislation Committee—because I bear the scars of the Child Support Agency and many other horrors. There have been one or two successes but the experience has not been great. I hear the assurances that I am getting officially, but would just like to make sure that if things start to become unstitched, or the timing slips, that adult ways will be found to deal with that. If things start to go wrong, we need to know about it. There is nothing worse than Ministers covering up. I am not suggesting for a moment that that is being done, but if things go wrong, my plea is that the Minister comes and looks me in the eye and says, “Look, there’s a glitch here, we’re going to lose six months”, or whatever it is. I would much rather have that than find suddenly that the whole project is in jeopardy because of the computers going wrong. I hope that he will take that message to heart.

I will just make a point in passing about pathfinders. There is a spatial dimension to the pathfinders as we roll this out. Coming from, and having formerly represented, a rural area, I know that the differences between the communities that this programme will serve are very important. In the evaluation of the pathfinders, I hope that my noble friend will pay very careful attention to the different types of communities that we are seeking to serve.

I want to make a very quick point in passing. The noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Sherlock, both made a point about guidance suddenly becoming a substitute for regulation. I say this in a considered way, but I was horrified by what Mr Mark Hoban said on Monday when the First Delegated Legislation Committee was discussing these regulations. He said:

“We think that it is more appropriate to rely on the discretion and judgment of our advisers to make the right decision for families. We will monitor that situation quite carefully and there will be training in place”.—[Official Report, Commons, First Delegated Legislation Committee, 11/2/13; col. 23.]

That is dismissing the qualitative difference between the essential protection that regulations provide and slipping into guidance. If this is to be part of the new system, I think he will come up against serious objection in this place if not in the House of Commons—to be fair, Mr Stephen Timms made the point powerfully. That is something that I will certainly share with other colleagues in watching like a hawk.

My final point is about the importance of the exceptions service and the evaluation framework. We have just seen some encouraging signs that the exceptions service will be deployed properly. It will need money but if it is done in the way that I understand it will be done, I would be satisfied with that. However, there is always a risk that it falls down in the deployment because it does not have the capacity to meet the demand. Frankly, it is very hard to assess the level of the demand that it will be expected to meet, certainly in the early months and years of this rollout.

I am very encouraged by the members of the expert group that is looking at the evaluation framework. I have been looking at the evaluation framework very carefully. This brings me back to where I came in: the way in which we monitor and evaluate this implementation will be absolutely crucial. My plea is for honesty and a continuing relationship with this House because I am long enough in the tooth to know that things get much better consideration here than anywhere else. If we do that, we have a much better chance of getting this system in place in time and in a way that benefits the kind of people we are trying to serve.

[The Lord Bishop of Worcester]

My Lords, I welcome the introduction of universal credit. I think it is a very important step forward. Like other noble Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for all the work that he and his colleagues have put into the regulations before us today.

However, I am concerned about the inadvertent hardship that might be caused to some of the most vulnerable in our society. The report of the inquiry led by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, Holes in the Safety Net: The Impact of Universal Credit on Disabled People and Their Families, has already been referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. It clearly sets out the concerns of disability charities and the millions of people they represent. I want briefly to highlight one of the issues about which I feel concern: the impact on families with disabled children.

As I understand it, the regulations laid before us today propose to reduce the level of financial support to most disabled children from £57 a week under the current system to just £28 a week, or £124 a month—a reduction of nearly £30 a week. According to the Government’s own estimates, 100,000 disabled children will be affected. Only the most severely disabled children who are on high-rate care components of the disability living allowance or registered blind will be unaffected.

Many parents of disabled children already struggle to find the money to cover the extra costs of having a disabled child, such as specialist adaptations to their home, access to disability-friendly services and higher travel and childcare expenses. Already, 28% of households with a disabled child are living in poverty, and this rises to around 50% if the additional costs associated with being disabled are taken into account.

For those affected by this further reduction in their income, the impact could be very serious. Two-thirds of them say that they will have to cut back on spending on food and more than half say that they will get into debt, yet on Monday we heard in the debate on the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill that the lower disability addition of universal credit, as well as being cut in half, will be now uprated by just 1% a year in 2014 and 2015, well below the expected rate of inflation. That is why one of my colleagues on these Benches will support an amendment to remove the child disability elements of universal credit from the 1% cap.

I highlight to your Lordships the serious concerns raised in the report on these and other areas produced by the inquiry headed by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. I urge the Minister to review and monitor the impact of universal credit on disabled people, and in particular on families with disabled children so that this policy can better meet its aims of supporting those in greatest need constructively.