Covid-19: Low-income Families

Lord German Excerpts

Thursday 8th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I know that my noble friend is a great champion of work coaches. They do a great job and we are proud of the work they are doing at the DWP. I am also proud of the fact that we are doubling the number, spending £895 million. We will have 13,500 more work coaches, 7,500 in the next three months. I am sure that they will do a great job.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, in the first four months of this pandemic, 300,000 people applied for universal credit because they had lost their job, and failed to get it. Far too many people are falling through the trapdoor of unemployment and finding that universal credit is not available to them. The Minister has just said that we are going to have a review. Will this be a root-and-branch review? Will it look at bringing our tax and benefit systems closer? The evidence now is that, if we do that, we will have a much better system by unifying the two.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

We are all aware of the difficult time that people are having in these days. I will take the noble Lord’s request for a root-and-branch review back to the Minister for Welfare Delivery. I will write back to the noble Lord. If he has some very good ideas, would he please write and give them to me?