Universal Credit

Baroness Fookes Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fookes (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to contribute to this debate with very mixed feelings. I was very approving of the Government’s decision to have a substantial uprating at the beginning of the pandemic and to extend it from the original 12 months to 18 months, but I query the wisdom of ending it abruptly at the end of this month. Others have made mention of those six Conservative Secretaries of State who have urged that this should be permanent. I remind everyone that the architect of universal credit, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, was one of those who contributed to this, and I think his views are worth a great deal. That said, I have been long enough in politics to know that it is one thing to give a benefit but quite another to take it away. Whatever the merits or demerits might be of doing so, as night follows day, there will be instances of real hardship—real, agonising true-life stories—which will immediately diminish the reputation of the Government for doing something that was in fact very good indeed.

I know that the Government are setting great store by getting more people into work, and I fully subscribe to that. I am delighted by the number of schemes that are afoot to try to help, particularly those that will give people greater skills and therefore the chance of earning better money in better jobs, which would bring them off universal credit altogether. Others have mentioned the fact that many people on universal credit are also working. That is something that we ought to see the end of as soon as possible. In the meantime, I am deeply concerned about such an abrupt ending—what I call the “cliff edge”. I am sure there are other ways of dealing with this, if the Government feel they cannot make the uplift a permanent arrangement, as they have made clear. Surely it would be more sensible to have some gradual diminution of the amount rather than doing it all in one go. I do not know whether that has been considered in government circles, but I think they should take another look at it to ensure that, as I say, we do not cause people immense hardship by an abrupt ending of something on which so many people rely.

I know the Minister understands very well the position of people who have not had it very good in life and who have been at the bottom of the pile, since much of her work has dealt with that, so I look to her to see if she can bring her powers of persuasion to bear on the powers that be.