Universal Credit

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Tyler for bringing this debate and to the Secretary of State for sitting in for a quite a lot of it. That was a good sign. She is no longer here, but I hope that the Minister will share her answers and the Hansard record with her, because it is about time the Government listened.

In July last year, your Lordships’ Economic Affairs Committee produced a report on universal credit. It called on the Government to make the £20 uplift permanent. It is an indictment of us as Peers that we have not yet found time to debate that report, over a year later. We need to do a better job of ensuring that we make use of such reports, because that committee raised a set of questions that necessitate considerable reflection.

In particular, the committee noted that universal credit can disadvantage women, disabled people and BAME, and that it was linked to increased food bank usage. The Leader of the other place has talked about the support given to food banks being “rather uplifting”. I do not find the support uplifting. It is a travesty that, in this country, people need to go to a food bank at all.

While I listened closely to the words of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, and it is clearly encouraging that people have rallied around the most vulnerable during the pandemic, we should not need food banks in this country, ever. The state should ensure that people are not indebted to such an extent that they cannot afford to feed themselves and their children.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, made absolutely the right points. For so many of us, £20 might seem a very small amount of money. How many chai lattes does it buy—how many things that seem so incidental to many people above the poverty line? But for others, that small amount of money makes all the difference. If it is right during the pandemic, it is right going forward as well, because we have heard that so many people are on in-work benefits. They cannot do more and more jobs. If they can get a better-paid job, fantastic—but if they cannot, there are questions to be raised.

I have a final question for the Minister. The Economic Affairs Committee, in calling for the uplift to be made permanent, said:

“Universal Credit should be set at a level that provides claimants with dignity and security.”


Does the Minister agree? If so, does she think that reducing the uplift will leave people with dignity and security?