DWP Policies and Low-income Households

Carol Monaghan Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

It is interesting to follow the hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), because the Government’s current policies have little to do with getting people into employment and everything to do with aggressively targeting the people who most need support. I want to mention three groups currently affected. Last year, I visited Emmaus, a charity working with homeless people across Glasgow, building their confidence through local employment projects. Everybody living in Emmaus accommodation signs off primary benefits except housing benefit and works full time within the community. If they are forced to move to universal credit, they will potentially have to take part in jobseeking schemes for which many of these vulnerable people are simply not ready.

I also want to mention recently graduated students and the barriers they face when trying to claim universal credit. The eligibility criteria state that a claimant must

“have lived in the UK for the last two years and not have been abroad for more than four weeks continuously during that time”.

This means that anyone who has worked or travelled abroad, as many students do—for language students, it is a compulsory part of their course—is ineligible for universal credit.

Finally, I want to talk about a new source of anxiety for many of my constituents: the news of the closure of half of Glasgow’s jobcentres. I spoke to several constituents outside Anniesland jobcentre on Friday, including a lady in her mid-50s who had worked all her life, until she suffered a stroke two years ago that left her paralysed down one side. She has been declared fit for work because her speech is unaffected, but due to a lack of mobility, her quarter-mile walk to the jobcentre takes her over an hour each way. Public transport is impossible because she does not have the mobility, and if it moves when she is standing, she could be on the floor, while a taxi is completely out of the question because of the expense. Under this sham of centralisation, her services are being moved to Partick, over two miles away.

None of the people I have mentioned are layabouts or scroungers; all of them strive for a better life and want to contribute fully to society. If we judge a society by how it treats its most vulnerable, I have no doubt how history will judge this Tory Government.