Universal Credit

Lord Hylton Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we are indeed trying to get that flexibility. One can look at our very intensive dialogue with the Treasury—going through point by point and milestone by milestone—in two ways. One can look at it as pretty onerous, and it is. On the other hand, it gives one a chance to look at what we should be doing next and changing it. One example is on the support system delivered locally—in the jargon, the LSSF. We were able to go to the Treasury and get more money put into that process quite recently because it could see how valuable and important that was.

Not locking everything down early and having that dialogue works. Frankly, you do not know what you are going to find out or what you are going to need to do when you have a major programme. Having that understanding from the Treasury of what we are doing and keeping it well-informed so that we can make those changes as we go along does work.

[Lord Hylton (CB)]

My Lords, most people are not yet eligible for universal credit. Can the noble Lord give the figures for how many people at the moment are subject to benefit sanctions and what is the current delay between agreeing that someone is eligible for a benefit and their actually receiving payment? Are these two factors not responsible for a good deal of destitution?

[Lord Freud]

In the universal credit build-out, we are fully aware that there is a gap between claim and payment. There is also a gap in the present legacy systems. We have set up a system of advances so that people can get the cash flow to match the differences. Alongside that, where there is, to use the word of the noble Lord, “destitution”, or immediate crisis, we are setting up the local support framework working with local authorities. They can get some of that support to people and are far more efficient at doing that than a bureaucratic central system would be.