Universal Credit Roll-out

Mhairi Black Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mhairi Black (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (SNP)]

I am going to make a straightforward speech as I am aware of how many Members want to speak. I am conscious that many of our debates involve jargon that is inaccessible to most people who try to follow politics, so I rise to make just three basic points. First, I will explain what universal credit actually is. Secondly, I will describe what has gone wrong since the universal credit roll-out began. Thirdly, I will explain why it is so important that the Government halt—not scrap—the roll-out until we can deal with the problems effectively.

I find myself in a bizarre situation: I am going to stick up for the principles behind a Tory policy. Universal credit is a simplified online-only way of receiving benefits. It rolls together six benefits, including unemployment benefit, tax credits and housing benefit, into one personally tailored payment. It makes sense. For a lot of people, social security used to stop altogether once they began to earn above a certain amount. Universal credit seeks to remedy that by slowly and steadily declining as people earn more through their job, rather than suddenly stopping altogether.

That all seems absolutely reasonable, which is why I stress again that we are not calling for universal credit to be scrapped altogether. We want it to be halted because, like most Conservative policies, the minute we scratch beneath the surface we see the harsh truth. What has gone wrong here? There is a minimum 42-day wait for the first payment, which we have heard umpteen folk talk about, but I do not think the Chamber appreciates the reality of what that means. It means the most vulnerable are being left for six weeks with absolutely nothing.

[Angela Crawley]

My South Lanarkshire constituency was one of the first in Scotland to see the roll-out of universal credit, and I have witnessed my constituents relying on food banks as they wait up to 12 weeks for their universal credit payment. Does my hon. Friend agree that the policy is clearly not working in practice? Will she invite the Minister to visit my constituency and see how his policy is actually working, because it is a disaster?

[Mhairi Black]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point because I want to say to Conservative Members that none of us is lying about our experiences. We are not making things up. We are coming to the House with genuine problems that the Government are failing to address.

DWP figures show that around one in four new claimants waits longer than six weeks to be paid—a 25% failure rate: staggeringly alarming given that universal credit is still in its early days. Benefit delays remain a primary reason for the increase in the use of food banks. Citizens Advice has found that, from 52,000 cases, those on universal credit appear to have, on average, less than £4 a month left to pay all their creditors after they have paid essential living costs.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mhairi Black]

I will keep going.

To progress with the roll-out of universal credit as it stands is callous at worst and arrogantly idiotic at best. We have heard multiple times that people can now apply for an advance payment, but the fact is that those advance payments are nothing more than a loan that has to be paid back at a later date. Simply changing the terms of that loan does nothing about the litany of systemic failures throughout the entire process. All it is doing is creating more of a burden on claimants and forcing people to deal with a problem that is not their fault in the first place.

The Government are almost starting to behave like some kind of pious loan shark, except instead of coming through people’s front door, they are coming after their mental health, their physical wellbeing, their stability and their sense of security. That is the experience of all our constituents.

This debate got me thinking about how all this has coincided with seven years of cuts and failures. The Government have failed to rebalance our economy, and they have failed to reach their own fiscal targets. We are not dealing with the national debt; we are simply shifting it on to vulnerable households. We have the worst decade of wage growth in 210 years. To put it in context, that is the length of time since the Napoleonic wars—that is how bad it is just now.

Scratch beneath the surface and we see that things are not as they appear. All we get is clichés about being strong and stable—scratch beneath it, and it is nothing like the truth. We are told that all these cuts are fine because we are introducing a national living wage—scratch beneath the surface, and it is a total lie because the national living wage is 95p below the real living wage.

I have sat in the Chamber and heard over and over again from Tory MPs that the social security reforms have been put in place to incentivise work. That is fair enough, but the Government cannot even incentivise their own Scottish Tory MPs to turn up and miss a football game in Barcelona—don’t dare talk about incentivising. I have heard the Government use that argument time and time again to justify their choosing to keep slashing money for the poor. The argument is used to justify the two-child policy and their sickening rape clause. [Interruption.] Conservative Members should listen for a wee second. I have heard it used to justify the sanctions regime while I have stood in this very Chamber and implored the Government to make it more humane—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Lady will be heard.

[Mhairi Black]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. As I have a wee bit of silence, let me take this opportunity to say as loudly and as clearly as possible to everybody in here: plunging people into debt does not incentivise work; forcing people into hunger does not incentivise work; causing anxiety and distress, and even evicting some families from their homes, does not incentivise work. Now the good news is that every single person sitting in this Chamber has the power to change this tonight, so listen to us—like I said, we are not making this up. I tell you something: this Government have absolutely no excuse for pushing ahead with this reform after today—halt it and halt it now.

State Pension Age for Women

Mhairi Black Excerpts

Wednesday 5th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Richard Graham]

I understand the point the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) is making. That was covered in considerable detail in the report of the Work and Pensions Committee, which was chaired by his colleague, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field). There are claims both ways on that. I suspect that there were definitely people who did not know, but perhaps not quite as many as has been suggested.

Let me come on to the Opposition parties’ proposals. In the first debate in this very Chamber some time ago, which, as the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) should know, was as well-attended as this one is, I warned the WASPI campaigners that they were in real danger of being led up the garden path by Labour and the Scottish National party. I note that, in 2016, the Labour party said it would commit £860 million to extend pension credits. That was reduced in its manifesto to £300 million, alongside a line that said:

“Labour is exploring options for further transitional protections.”

After two and a half years, I would have thought that it would have come up with some result from its explorations, but there is none so far. The Scottish National party, which simply said in its manifesto:

“We will also continue to support the WASPI campaign”,

now has the devolved powers in Scotland to give additional discretionary sums of money to those affected.

[Mhairi Black (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Richard Graham]

No, I will not take any further interventions. There are many people who want to speak.

My strong recommendation to the Minister is this. He is a new, capable Minister, and I know he has looked at this issue. He should focus on what extra support he and the Government can give to those women who are still in work longer than they otherwise expected to be. In particular, he should spell out more about what the Government’s strategy for “fuller working lives” involves. Meanwhile, he has in his in-tray two important issues to look at, which affect other pensioners: the fact that there are real issues for people who are getting net pay and not benefiting from their employer’s contributions, and those people with too little to get over the hurdle to get the pension at all—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mhairi Black (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I was going to congratulate the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) on bringing this subject to the House again, but I actually find myself wishing that he had not, because I cannot believe that we are still debating it. I am absolutely scunnered with banging on about the injustice to this group of women. The fact that we have to have another debate is an absolute disgrace and says a lot about the Government and their priorities.

We are at the stage where these debates are almost scripted for me. I know exactly what is going to come back from the Government Benches and, like most people here, I know what I am going to say. We have heard the Government argue, “Well, the 1995 Act gave 15 years’ notice. That is exactly what the Turner commission recommended, so what is the problem?” Let me say it as clearly as possible: the problem is that nobody knew about these changes. The first letters were not sent out until 2009—14 years after the changes. To put that in context, I have been alive only eight years longer than that. That is 14 years in which consecutive Governments sat on their backside and did nothing, and the Government are now complaining that women are—quite rightly—angry that they never knew about the changes.

The thing is that the Government did not tell us about this issue with their hands in the air and say, “Aye, you’re right, sorry. We got that a wee bit wrong.” The information came from the hard-working women behind me in the Gallery through freedom of information requests and constant letters to the Government. The Government have been nothing but obstructive and downright stubborn the whole way through this campaign and since the issue was raised—so much so that the SNP actually went away and re-did its own work. We used our own money to commission our own report, which shows that this issue could plausibly be sorted and the legislation could at least be amended a wee bit.

All it would take is £8 billion spread across five years. That is a substantial amount, but as was said by the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham)—I had the pleasure of serving with him on the Work and Pensions Committee—the idea that the Government will genuinely stand in front of everyone here and say, “We can’t afford it,” is quite frankly laughable. It has been pointed out many times that they found £1 billion for a deal to cling on to power, but they say they cannot find the money to give women the pensions they are due.

[Ian Blackford]

My hon. Friend is a very reasonable person; let us see whether we can help the Government. We know that the national insurance fund has a surplus of £30 billion. Let us lay to rest the myth that there is a black hole. The Government Actuary’s Department’s own figures suggest that that fund will remain in surplus until at least the mid-2030s. May I suggest to the Government that they use that surplus? Women have paid in to the fund; let us make sure they get their pension, and let us do it today.

[Mhairi Black]

Not surprisingly, I agree with that statement. I heard some muttering from the Government Benches about how that is a lot of rubbish. Let me just say this: if that is a lot of rubbish in their heads, they should bring their plans forward. They do not get to criticise other parties’ plans when they have not even bothered to come up with their own.

Like I say, the debate is almost scripted, because I know that the Minister will say at some point, “We did look at this in 2011 and we did make the concessions at the time.” I guarantee that the Minister will say that. Let my reply be this: that is not how the world works. That is not how society works. If citizens come to them with a time-sensitive problem and say, “This still isn’t working,” it is the Government’s job to listen. It is not the job of the Government to look back and go, “We talked about that a couple of years ago, so I’m afraid there’s no movement there whatsoever.” If that is the case, I am looking forward to the next time the Army needs new funds, the next time this Parliament needs doing up, and so on. The idea that we cannot afford it is ridiculous.

Fundamentally, the worst part of this whole issue is that these women are targeted. The Government like to sit back and act as though these women are just unfortunate casualties of austerity and say, “Our hands are tied; we can’t do anything.” That is not the case; they are targeted. These are women who have suffered pay inequality and social inequality all their lives. We even heard earlier that women were told to use their husbands’ pensions. Society has changed a lot since then. What are we doing for these women now? And what about lesbian couples—women who are in equal marriages with other women? Are they just expected to bear the brunt? [Interruption.] It is not even a double whammy; it is a quadruple whammy at this point.

I am amazed that I feel the need to point this out. These women are blameless. They are guilty of nothing. They have done nothing wrong other than, for instance, not reading the back pages of the Financial Times in 1995. The only other two things they are guilty of are being born in the ’50s and being women. The Government do not get to plead that this is all in the name of equality; when only women are suffering under their definition of equality, it is time for them to reassess that definition.

Fundamentally, Governments should look after their people. When their people are coming to them and saying there is problem, it is their job to fix it. Let me put a little reality into this. I got an email today from a WASPI woman. I cannot remember where she is from—it is somewhere in England. She told me that her friend committed suicide after seeing the general election result because she could not face what would happen to her. Citizens are committing suicide over an issue that could be solved just like that—an issue that the Government could do a U-turn on at any given moment.

The Government managed to fork out a magical £1 billion to cling on to power; they must really want the job of having to fix these things. When they can find £1 billion for self-interest, they do not get to claim that money is the reason they cannot help.

The Government quite rightly dropped their manifesto pension plans—two of them in total, I think—because they saw how damaging, unworkable and unpopular they would be. That was wise. In actual fact, I have a bit of respect for them for being able to go, “Aye, we got that wrong, guys, so we’re pulling back. We’re listening to you.” I say, I hope for the last time: just drop one more plan. Realise that this issue is cross-party and affects people from different backgrounds and different areas. These are people’s mothers, aunties, sisters and cousins. Please do the right thing. Do the job of the Government—fix the problem and start looking after people.