Universal Credit (Transitional Provisions) (Claimants previously entitled to a severe disability premium) Amendment Regulations 2021

Viscount Chandos Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Chandos (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly but vehemently in wholehearted support of my noble friend Lady Sherlock’s regret Motion.

I was privileged to be a member of the Economic Affairs Committee when it conducted its inquiry into universal credit. It began in January last year, before it became clear that Covid-19 would indeed spread from China and have such a devastating impact on British society and the economy, although our resulting report was published in July. It was therefore able to reflect and comment on the action taken by the Government in response to the pandemic crisis. The chronology is important because we set out to review the workings of universal credit quite independently of the pandemic and to make recommendations for times in the future which, even if they will be inescapably affected by the pandemic, will be more normal and comparable to circumstances before that crisis.

The specific issue of the severe disability premium, which this Motion is about, should be seen in the broader context of universal credit, its design and its agonising phased introduction over the past 10 years against the background of the Conservative-led Government’s premeditated reduction in welfare spending. Professor Jonathan Portes, who was, inter alia, chief economist at the DWP between 2002 and 2008, recently wrote:

“The overwhelming case against cutting Universal Credit: not the pandemic, but the extraordinary cuts to unemployment-related benefits over the last four decades.”


The majority of these cuts, which took benefits from 25% of average earnings in 1979 to under 15% in 2019, were implemented by Conservative Governments. However, disappointingly, I have to acknowledge that the Labour Government of 1997 to 2010 did not do anything to reverse that trend.

What is true broadly of the inadequacy of universal credit is even more so in relation to its failure for so many of those with disabilities. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation calculates that 31% of disabled people live in poverty, compared to around 20% of the population as a whole. Half of all those in poverty are disabled or live with a disabled person.

The Economic Affairs Committee was advised that the introduction of an equivalent to the severe disability premium would cost approximately £1 billion per annum. If 10 Downing Street can employ three times as many official photographers as the White House, surely it would agree that the sum of £1 billion to alleviate the poverty suffered by 50% of all disabled people would represent extraordinary value for money. Can the Minister give us the comfort that this will be addressed, allowing my noble friend to withdraw her Motion? In the absence of that comfort, I would have no hesitation in supporting my noble friend’s Motion if she chooses to press it.