Universal Credit

Chris Green Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

I have a qualified welcome for this important debate. I will touch briefly on universal credit and free school meals.

On universal credit, I welcome what has been done by the Chancellor and a succession of Secretaries of State. Universal credit is there to get people into work and to ensure that, when they are in work, they can take on more work, make progress in their careers and, ideally, cease to be dependent on welfare payments. That is what we want to happen, and the system has been reformed over the years to become better and better.

I have very little time, but I want to highlight the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen). She captured brilliantly the reforms that have been delivered in recent years and made the point that a debate that should have been about improving universal credit has turned into a headline-grabbing agenda by the Labour party.

I have visited the two jobcentres that serve my constituency, and the enthusiasm of the staff in both of them for universal credit was incredible. I was blown away by their support for it. They can help people now: rather than being faceless, grey, stand-offish organisations, they can engage with people in a way that has not been possible for them before. We should support universal credit enthusiastically—and, yes, where improvements need to be made, let us make them.

On free school meals, we ought to have a vision that the children who are most in need should receive them, but they should not be received by the children of those who are earning a significantly higher amount of money. It is disappointing that Labour Members will vote today to prevent 50,000 children—the poorest children in our country—from receiving free school meals when universal credit is rolled out and will vote to ensure that families with an income of more than £40,000 a year continue to receive them. I think that the Labour party has the wrong values, but it is not just the Labour party: in my constituency, the Liberal Democrats have been putting out propaganda saying that the children of those who earn more than £7,400 a year will no longer receive free school meals. That is not a cut-off; it is only a fraction of the actual income.

Because of the time constraint, I will end my speech by saying that I support the Government and their actions.