Universal Credit

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms McVey]

To be fair, 76% of people coming on to universal credit had arrears in their housing benefit, according to the report by the National Federation of ALMOs. That is the reality of it. I have given the figures for the extra debt people got into under the previous Labour Government.

Some very interesting speeches were given in the House in 2016, when people understood that we had to get the benefits bill down. This is what was said on the Floor of the House:

“The deficit has to be eliminated. We believe in controlling the cost of social security so that it is fair”

on

“the people who are paying for it”—[Official Report, 20 July 2015; Vol. 598, c. 1265]—

and for those who need it. That did not come from a Conservative Member but from Labour’s acting shadow Secretary of State for the Department for Work and Pensions. We all believe in making a fair benefits system and getting people into work, and that is what universal credit is doing.

[Mrs Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

As a northern MP, I know that there was a much slower uptake of really great work in the north. Will the Secretary of State confirm that unemployment has fallen by half in the north-west, which is giving the security of a pay packet to so many more people?

[Ms McVey]

My hon. Friend is right that unemployment has fallen by more than half in the north-west. I am surprised that the hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) did not know that but, then again, the Opposition are not always too hot on their figures.

I want to give another important piece of information. Labour’s position on the Welfare Reform and Work Bill in 2016 was, through the Labour Whip, to abstain on the changes. Some of them broke the Whip, but the position was to abstain, and this is why: in 1997-98, the welfare cost per household was £5,603 but, by 2010-11, when Labour left office, that figure had gone up to £8,350—up by nearly £3,000 per household. That was why everybody agreed in principle that universal credit was the way forward and that we had to get the benefit bill under control.