Universal Credit

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Wednesday 21st December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I too am grateful for this opportunity to mark the huge contribution made by the noble Lord, Lord Freud, to the design and implementation of universal credit. However, I doubt that the Minister will be surprised that my three minutes will not just be made up of warm words, because reports from the ground are not encouraging.

One of the biggest problems is the combined effect of a seven-day waiting period and monthly payments in arrears, which, after assessment, means that the first payment is not made for at least six weeks. This is causing considerable hardship and is leading to reliance on food banks. Monthly payments also create unnecessary difficulties for those—especially mothers—who just about get by when budgeting weekly or fortnightly. They are not essential to UC’s architecture and I urge the Government most strongly to look at them again.

I am particularly concerned about the implications for those granted refugee status, who are given only 28 days to move from asylum support to mainstream benefits. This is already a problem, with too many left destitute because 28 days simply is not long enough, and, by definition, it will not be enough time under UC. Welcome as the Home Office/DWP pilot is, it cannot solve that problem. A related problem is refugees and other vulnerable claimants who are unable to claim because they do not have any form of bank account, despite the assurance given in a recent Written Answer that this does not prevent a UC claim. Again, I urge Ministers to look into this.

Universal support delivered locally is supposed to be the answer to the more general problems created by monthly payments. However, I am told that it is functioning pretty minimally now. The evaluation of the trials found that the,

“most significant challenge in delivering personal budgeting support was that ... participants simply did not have enough money each month”.

Well, that challenge is going to get harder with the lower benefit cap, the two-child limit and the benefits freeze at a time of rising inflation.

Moreover, the universal credit that the Minister is bequeathing his successor is not the one that he championed through your Lordships’ House because of the cuts in work allowances, which we have already heard about and which bear the fingerprints of the Treasury. Even the Minister’s former boss, Iain Duncan Smith, has made a powerful case against this cut, pointing out that work allowances are a much more cost-effective mechanism for helping the just about managing than are personal tax allowances—a point also made by the right reverend Prelate. Of course, the Minister could not possibly comment but I hope that, once he has stepped down, he might feel freer to do so.

Nick Timmins described the Minister as,

“the last political figure to understand, in full technicolor, the gory details”,

of UC. The DWP has been very fortunate to have someone of his ability committed to it. I hope that those who follow will learn from his experience and will be willing to look again at the emerging problems. I am very encouraged that the noble Lord, Lord Macpherson, made clear in his valuable maiden speech that he will be taking part in those debates—and I should mention that I have no prejudice against his Treasury background.

As for the noble Lord, Lord Freud, we may rarely have seen eye to eye in exchanges in this Chamber but I am grateful to him for his courtesy and openness outside it, and I wish him all the best for his well-deserved retirement.