Universal Credit Roll-out

Debate between Neil Coyle and Michael Tomlinson

Thursday 16th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Michael Tomlinson]

I will come back to the Labour party’s record on rolling out benefits in due course, but the hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I wish that Labour Members would speak up more loudly with their support for the principle behind universal credit, because at the moment it sounds like they are calling for not a delay or a pause, but a scrap. The Labour party has opposed every single benefit change that this Government have brought into effect, and the cost of its position would have been tens of billions of pounds. However, this is not about the money. More importantly, it is about the people, and universal credit is about encouraging people into work.

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

I am really pleased to hear that the hon. Gentleman is supporting universal credit, although he failed to vote in favour of it the other week. Would he also support a renewed project to study how universal credit supports people to get into work? The Department for Work and Pensions has delayed and denied an opportunity to review the original study to prove whether universal credit is still working, because lots of people expect that it is not.

[Michael Tomlinson]

Perhaps the Minister will respond to the hon. Gentleman’s point in due course.

I chair the all-party group on youth employment, so I want to use any mechanism available to encourage young people—everyone, in fact—to get into work. [Interruption.] Perhaps the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) could listen to my response, rather than just shaking his head and taking part in exchanges across the Chamber.

[Neil Coyle]

The Minister is chuntering, so I cannot hear the hon. Gentleman.

[Michael Tomlinson]

Forgive me; I will speak up. If the hon. Gentleman stops talking, however, he might be able to hear a little more easily. He is more than welcome to come along to the meetings of the all-party group. We met yesterday, which was the date on which the latest Office for National Statistics employment figures came out. We track those figures each month. It was pleasing to see that there are still record numbers for youth employment and record lows of young people who are out of work. The youth unemployment rate of 11.9% is in touching distance of the lowest ever figure on comparable records, and it is almost half the youth unemployment rate of over 22% in 2011, which followed the disastrous Labour Government.