Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Damian Hinds and Julian Brazier

Monday 27th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

We continue to work closely with partners and stakeholders to ensure that this service is a success. There are some questions about passported benefits and we continue to work through them.

[Sir Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for coming down to see the successful roll-out of universal credit in Canterbury, where nearly a third of the unemployed now enjoy universal credit. That has not only pushed down the level of unemployment, but resulted in remarkably few cases coming to my surgeries.

[Damian Hinds]

Universal credit is a transformational benefit. It converts six benefits into one, which means working with one organisation and not three. It supports people into work and makes sure not only that work pays, but that it is visible to the individual that work pays. It is indeed transformational in our system.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Damian Hinds and Julian Brazier

Monday 20th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

Anybody who changes from tax credits to universal credit as a result of managed migration can get transitional protection. For those who are coming into it with a new claim, it is a wholly different system with a completely different support set, including much more child care support. There are various other reforms from which the individual to whom the hon. Gentleman refers would also benefit.

[Sir Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend accept that universal credit, which now reaches almost a third of the unemployed people in my constituency, is a much simpler system and the first major new benefit introduced in my political lifetime that has not resulted in a whole string of correspondence from people with difficulties?

[Damian Hinds]

It is indeed a dramatic and critical reform for our welfare system. I will highlight just one statistic: for every 100 people who moved into work under the old jobseeker’s allowance system, 113 do so under universal credit.