Universal Credit: People with Mental Health Problems

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton on securing this debate and on his introduction to it, and all my noble friends who have contributed this evening. I also commend all those involved with the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute for their work in high- lighting these issues.

Ever since its inception, I have had a steady stream of people telling me how hard they found it to navigate the online pathway to getting and maintaining universal credit. This is a particular problem for certain categories, such as those without ready access to the internet and those for whom their mental health makes the process of applying seem insuperable. If they do push through, it can aggravate their mental health. When I raise this, Ministers normally say that most people have no trouble at all. I have never been entirely persuaded by that, but even if I were, it does not seem grounds for not doing more to help the rest. After all, even a small percentage of 6 million people is a lot of people; it is not a small percentage. This report suggests that

“nearly 1.3 million UC claimants … report experiencing significant mental distress”.

For them, the requirements of UC are difficult to complete on their own.

As my noble friend Lady Drake said, most UC claimants with mental health problems who were surveyed say they have needed help from family and friends to manage their accounts at some point, and a quarter have needed it often. However, involving others is not straightforward because of the issues around explicit consent, which my noble friend Lord Davies explained very well. As both he and my noble friend Lady Drake have said, the whole process of delegating explicit consent online or over the phone ironically requires claimants to navigate the very tasks which led to them needing help in the first place. Any IT specialist will tell you that, if you make security issues too tough, people just find workarounds. My noble friend Lord Davies is quite right, as half of respondents simply shared their login details with somebody else. That is not helping in any way, so we have to find a better way of dealing with this.

The report notes that

“Symptoms of mental health problems can make it harder”


to make and maintain a universal credit claim. It talks quite interestingly about pain points in the UC system where a significant number of claimants started to struggle. These included, for example, trying to understand how their awards were calculated and which changes in circumstances they had to tell the DWP about. Confusion there is really dangerous as a failure to report a relevant change could lead to underpayments or overpayments and even being prosecuted—so that is really bad. It also included trying to challenge deductions or sanctions and renegotiating their claimant commitment.

The charity Rethink Mental Illness did a little briefing for this debate. It agrees that third-party access is vital, since its mental health and money advisers report that a lot of people severely impacted by mental illness cannot access their online journal. I realise that privacy is really important and appropriate safeguards need to be put in place. Yet, when I raised via a Written Question that both partners can see any messages exchanged by either one of them with a work coach on their journal and that this could be an issue in relation to domestic abuse because it had been raised by a claimant, I got a fairly dusty answer saying simply that people should not share sensitive information. Of course, all kinds of information can be sensitive in the context of domestic abuse. I think we are getting stuck both ways. Has the DWP investigated whether there could be a more nuanced way of treating issues around access to information which provides more protection for privacy, supports those needing assistance and works for those with fluctuating capacity? That is one of the issues.

I will be interested to hear the response to the question from my noble friend Lady Donaghy about CABx and the roles they might be able to play. I thought that was a marvellous speech and I commend all three of my colleagues for some very serious research and work that has gone into preparing for tonight. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response to my noble friend Lady Drake’s question about the idea of a new help-to-manage service. If the DWP invested the best part of £40 million in the help-to-claim service, it is an awful shame to spend that getting people on to universal credit if they then fall off because they cannot manage their claims. What are the Government doing about that?

I have a couple of quick questions for the Minister. First, does she accept the principle that a significant minority of people find the universal credit system difficult to navigate, both in terms of applying and maintaining their claim? I think it is helpful for the debate for her to answer that question directly. Does she accept that there is a problem for a significant minority in claiming and staying on?

Secondly, does she think the situation will get worse with managed migration? Can she tell us when that is going to happen? There are around 1.9 million people on ESA. If they move to universal credit and the report is right in that two-thirds of those are considered to have mental health problems, that is quite a problem coming down the track in terms of scale. I think that figure of two-thirds, from looking at the report, was from a 2014 study. If the department has more recent figures, perhaps the Minister could share them with us. Rethink hears from people who are scared to move on to UC from legacy benefits precisely because they are afraid of using the online system. The charity is calling for improvements to online accessibility before managed migration is rolled out further. Does the Minister think there is an issue here? If so, what is being done about it?

Finally, the report makes an impressively modest number of recommendations, but they are quite specific and practically addressed. My noble friend Lord Davies summarised them well. Given that the title of the report was in the title of this debate, the department has had plenty of time to look at the recommendations. Given that, and that my noble friend went to all the trouble of getting the debate and of researching the recommendations, I hope that the Minister can at least give a comment on each of them. If she cannot today, could she write to address each? There are not very many. If the department really does not like them, it is only fair to explain whether it thinks there is not a problem or that this is not a good way to solve it. If so, what else is it doing?

With that said, a lot of work has gone into this report, and I commend my noble friend and all those involved in it, especially the interviewees. I think of Gary, who was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Davies. If all he wants is a little help and some sympathy, surely that is not beyond us, is it?