Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Carden Excerpts(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Mims Davies
I am delighted to welcome Sign Language Week, which is marking its 21st anniversary of recognising British Sign Language as a language in its own right. I encourage Members to join the British Deaf Association reception after these questions have ended.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
The Minister for Employment (Jo Churchill)
The plan is to roll out those migration notices by 31 March. We intend to publish data for the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. We are committed to ensuring that the transition works as smoothly as possible for everyone.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Carden Excerpts(1 year, 2 months ago)
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The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Tom Pursglove)
We have made available a diversity of assessment channels to people, but the key point is that anybody who wants to have a face-to-face appointment is able to have one. They can request one and that will be facilitated, and I think that is important. Jobcentres will be at the leading edge of delivering on our new supported employment programme—universal support—and we have WorkWell coming on stream as well. We do not want to write anybody off. Where people want to work or to try to work, we should be supporting that wherever we can, and that is precisely what we are all about.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
Tom Pursglove
I would obviously want to see the details of the case in question before commenting on it, so perhaps the hon. Member could kindly share those details with me. One of the things we are focused on is getting to a place where people with conditions or disabilities that are unlikely to improve or are only likely to deteriorate are not having to go through repeat assessments. That is the objective we are working towards through the White Paper reforms. [Interruption.] I hear a lot of chuntering from the Opposition. I would be absolutely delighted if they would get on and support our reforms so we can make those improvements.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Carden Excerpts(1 year, 4 months ago)
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Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mims Davies)
The local housing allowance policy is kept under regular review and rates are reviewed annually. LHA rates were boosted with a £1 billion funding increase in 2010, and this significant investment has been maintained since then. Discretionary housing payments, or DHPs, are available for those who face a shortfall in meeting their housing costs.
Mims Davies
There is no one-size-fits-all in regard to the challenge we face. This is a multi-layered and multi-textured challenge, and I hope the hon. Gentleman will be assured that I am focused on addressing the issue of rising housing costs. To that end, I am engaging with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and have consulted with the Local Government Association and other stakeholders. The hon. Gentleman has noted the devolved point—of course, I will look at that issue as well. LHA rates are not intended to meet all rents in all areas where rents may perhaps be more expensive. Those in receipt of benefits will have to make challenging choices, as others do, but people listening today should have a look at the household support fund and the benefits calculator on gov.uk and make sure that they are getting all the support that may be out there, as well as the cost of living payments.
Dan Carden
I listened carefully to the Minister’s answer. Liverpool, Walton is the most deprived constituency in the whole of England, yet the annual gap between local housing allowance and the cheapest 30% of properties now stands at over £1,500. My casework contains more and more heartbreaking stories of families unable to afford the cost of their housing. People need their Government to act on rising private rents and the lack of decent homes: to raise the allowances and take control on rents in the short term, but to increase the supply of housing in the long term. What is this Government’s plan?
Mims Davies
Mr Speaker, may I just confirm that the LHA rates were boosted by a £1 billion funding increase in 2020? I may have said 2010, so I apologise to the House, but that significant investment is maintained.
I recognise that rents are increasing, as the hon. Gentleman has said, and that it is a challenging fiscal environment and difficult decisions are having to be made. He has mentioned the most vulnerable. For those of working age or with disability benefits, those benefits have been increased in line with inflation for 2023-24. The benefit cap has also increased, but I want to reassure the House that I understand this is a real concern for many of our constituents of all sizes of house, and I am focused on addressing those challenges.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Carden Excerpts(1 year, 11 months ago)
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Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mel Stride)
First, on behalf of the whole House, may I welcome the hon. Member for City of Chester (Samantha Dixon) to this House, and wish her every happiness and a productive time in the House?
The Government have maintained the uplift they provided in the local housing allowance in 2020, at a cost of almost £1 billion, targeting the 30th percentile of rents. Those who need assistance with housing costs also have recourse to the discretionary housing payments administered by local authorities.
Mel Stride
I did of course very carefully consider the points that the hon. Lady has made, just as I very carefully considered the extent to which there should be an uprating of benefits more generally; they went up by 10.1%—the level of the consumer prices index at that time. I also considered very carefully what the uplift in pensions should be and, again, that was 10.1%, the level of CPI. For pensioners, we also stood by the triple lock.
Dan Carden
In Liverpool, the shortfall between housing benefit and the cheapest rents has now risen to £1,360 over a year. Outside London, private sector rents are rising across the country at an average of 11.8%, yet no one from the Conservative party seems to recognise that rent increases also cause inflation. Conservative Members are frequently eager to call for pay restraint and for benefits to be held down but never for landlords to heed the same advice. My constituents now face homelessness. Does the Secretary of State recognise that high housing costs and completely inadequate housing benefit lie at the root of the cost of living crisis and that the choice for the Government should be between capping rents and raising support?
Mel Stride
The hon. Gentleman rightly raises inflation, which we are all having to contend with at the moment. That is why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor came before the House at the time of the autumn statement and set out a clear plan as to how to bring inflation down. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that it will be half its current level in a year’s time. A large amount of support has been put forward, with the £650 cost of living payment this year to those low-income households that he describes, covering some 8 million people up and down the country.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Carden Excerpts(2 years ago)
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Mel Stride
I have taken a personal vow not to engage in too much Punch and Judy politics with the hon. Lady during Question Time, so I will not talk about what happens to unemployment when different parties get into power; I will leave that for another day. She is absolutely right about the key challenge around economic inactivity. That is why the Department doubled the number of new work coaches in the last two years; there are an additional 13,500 people working to support the exact people whom she rightly identified as needing that assistance to get into work. As I said, I intend to put considerably more energy into the whole issue of economic inactivity, and to bring announcements on the subject to the House in due course.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mims Davies)
No assessment has been made. Emergency measures brought in during covid meant that the sanctions rate was artificially low. We always expected the rate to increase when we reintroduced face-to-face appointments and conditionality in order to help fill record numbers of job vacancies.
Dan Carden
I am disappointed with that answer. The current high rate of universal credit sanctions is unprecedented. Right now, twice as many people on universal credit are being sanctioned and having their benefits cut as did before the pandemic, three years ago. At this very moment, families face the reality of hunger and freezing homes because of soaring food prices and energy bills, as well as rising rents. Instead of making things harder for those who are struggling, and punishing those on the lowest incomes, will the Minister commit to raising social security in line with inflation and end the sanctions regime, which will only inflict more hardship and homelessness this winter on those in areas such as mine?
Mims Davies
I am afraid that I do not agree. People are sanctioned only if they fail to attend appointments without good reason, and fail to meet the requirements that they have agreed to meet. Conditionality is an important part of a fair and effective welfare system. It is right that there should be a system to encourage claimants to take reasonable steps to prepare for and move into work. I reiterate that claimants with severe mental health or wellbeing conditions are not subject to work-related requirements or sanctions.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Carden Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
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Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)
Dominic Raab
The Philippines has been a challenge, but I can reassure my hon. Friend that we managed to secure the return of over 600 British nationals on UK charter flights in April. I spoke to Foreign Minister Locsin at the end of March to secure those April flights. My hon. Friend will know that the Government of the Philippines suspended commercial flights earlier this month. They have resumed today. On the financial support that she referred to, in exceptional circumstances, as a last resort, there are loans available to enable UK nationals to return home on flights.
Dan Carden [V]
It is now clear that other European countries used emergency repatriation flights in parallel with commercial options to much greater success. The German Government chartered 30 times more of these flights by April than the UK Government, so it was the Foreign Secretary’s decision early on to rely almost solely on commercial options to get people home that left so many British citizens stranded abroad for so long. So will he publish the official advice that he received on his decision, which led to so many British citizens being stranded abroad for so long?
Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Carden Excerpts(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Amber Rudd
I thank my right hon. Friend for pointing out the real benefits seen over the past few years and how important it is that the system helps individuals into work. It is the people who have got the new jobs who need the congratulations, but also the work coaches, who for the first time provide a personal service to ensure that every individual is helped into work.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
Professor Philip Alston talks about things that those of us who choose to see them see in our constituencies every time we are back there. The new Secretary of State comes into a Department where her Ministers are on autopilot, denying the real, lived experiences of my constituents. Instead of showing the signs of Stockholm syndrome, why does she not give us a break from the past and not misrepresent reports, but actually listen to the UN special rapporteur?
Amber Rudd
The fact that I think that the UN rapporteur’s report is wrong does not mean that we do not listen to other reports and experts in the area. The hon. Gentleman does not seem interested in the facts surrounding the success of the scheme. We can hold these two things in our heads: overall, UC is being successful and work is at record levels—these are good things—while also acknowledging that there are not insignificant areas that need changing and addressing. We can do both those things.
Poverty in Liverpool
Dan Carden Excerpts(6 years ago)
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Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) on her excellent speech; she set out everything that the city faces, from cuts to local authorities, the hostile environment on benefits and the personal experiences that we come across in our surgeries every week, as well as the evidence in report after report. The Government seem determined to turn a blind eye to those reports and doubt their veracity, and I find it shocking when the Minister shakes his head, when we see such experiences every day.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Justin Tomlinson)
I was not shaking my head.
Dan Carden
You were during my hon. Friend’s speech. The experiences I am talking about are things we see every day in Liverpool.
I was elected for the first time last year, to represent a Liverpool constituency, and it is an incredible privilege. When I am asked what the biggest issue facing my constituency is, I say poverty—and it is, because that is the critical issue affecting people, in their long-term health, educational outcomes, job opportunities, living standards and mental health. Most of all, it affects their sense of self-worth. That is the most hurtful part of seeing the decline in our communities. As my hon. Friends have done, it is right to put on the record how proud Scousers are, and how strong our communities are. That is shown by the work that our community centres and food banks do day in, day out. Liverpool is an astonishing city that is doing well in many respects.
This debate set me thinking about what poverty is, and what we are talking about today. If we look back in history, we see different types of poverty. I have seen individuals fall into poverty—people can lose a job, be moved on, and then perhaps another job appears, and during that time, trade unions and charities may help out. Families also fall into poverty. My family was affected by unemployment. My dad was unemployed for seven years, and sometimes it felt as if we did not have much money when we were growing up. Nevertheless, we had a family unit, we had a community and we had support. We still had good schools and public services, the local authority did its bit, and there were youth facilities. Today we are talking about whole communities being pushed into poverty while the safety net is withdrawn from the bottom.
Poverty is man-made. It does not exist in a vacuum; it is the result of decisions made by the powerful. No one person is responsible for their own poverty. Austerity is and has been a political choice, not an economic necessity. Since 2010 this Government have handed out an eye-watering £110 billion in tax giveaways for the biggest corporations and the super-rich, paid for by devastating cuts to wages, living standards and essential public services for the rest. They have starved our schools of funding—something they deny—taken police off our streets, including 1,000 from Merseyside Police, and left our NHS and social care in crisis.
Not only have the cuts themselves been political, but so too has their distribution. New research from the University of Cambridge shows that post-industrial cities in the north of England have been hit by the deepest cuts to local government spending and that, on average, Labour councils have been hit four times harder than Tory councils. Few places have been hit harder than Liverpool, with the staggering 64% cut to local authority funding that we have heard about. Conservative Members tell us not to fear because the Prime Minister announced at the Tory party conference that austerity is over. Leaving aside the fact that we have heard such empty rhetoric three times before, I assure the Minister that the reality on the streets of Walton and across Liverpool tells a different story as austerity rolls on, piling misery on our communities.
We have already heard many of the statistics, so I will not repeat them all. Average wages in Liverpool are £11,000 below the national average, and 40% of children in my constituency are growing up in poverty. Liverpool is now classed as having the second-highest levels of destitution of any city in the UK. On top of that, this Government now heap universal credit—a policy so fundamentally flawed that it has become an exemplar of institutional incompetence. [Interruption.] I think I heard the Minister tut, but this is being played out on our streets, and we see the evidence in report after report. Perhaps he will respond to some of the points raised today, including the Trussell Trust’s report, which states that demand for food banks has soared by 52% in areas of universal credit roll-out, compared with 13% in other areas.
Housing associations, letting agents and private landlords have told me that tenants are falling into rent arrears in areas such as Bootle and elsewhere where the roll-out has gone ahead, and that evictions will increase. The calamitous roll-out in my constituency comes right before Christmas, and my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) was right to call for it to be delayed, at least until after the Christmas month, when we know it will cause increased hardship. The figures are stark, but they do not do justice to the human misery that I already deal with in my casework under the existing benefits system.
Under this Conservative Government, we are being hurtled backwards to bygone days, reminiscent of when it was a crime to be poor. The Government’s welfare reforms have seen hundreds of millions of pounds sucked out of Liverpool’s local economy. The benefit freeze—in reality it is not a “freeze” but a real-terms cut for millions of low-income families—has meant a loss of £45 million for households in Liverpool. We have heard about the cumulative effect of such cuts.
Given the pressures, some people have to give up employment to care for elderly relatives. A scaffolder came to my constituency office and explained that he has had to give up good, well-paid employment because the care is not there for his elderly mother. We have heard how the local authority already has to act as a sticking plaster, which shows that the current benefits system is failing. I want to congratulate the Mayor and the local authority on their work.
Next week the Chancellor will reveal the Government’s Budget, and we will no doubt have a debate about economic growth and the fudging of figures to mask deep systemic problems in our economy. Not only have we seen the worst decade for wages in centuries, but the UK is the only advanced economy in which wages have continued to fall, even when the economy is growing. That is because of a decades-long trend of the share of gains from growth going increasingly towards profit, not wages. More and more economists tell us the blindingly obvious: having money from economic growth flow to working people and the poor rather than to the rich would stimulate better rates of economic growth and lower unemployment. As income inequality increases, the potential for economic growth is constrained. Since the 1970s, while productivity and the economy kept growing, the average worker’s pay package did not. The Financial Times has stated that since 2007,
“the UK was the only big advanced economy in which wages contracted while the economy expanded. In most other countries, including France and Germany, both the economy and wages have grown…The UK sits on its own as a rich economy that experienced a strong economic performance while the real wages of its workers dropped.”
What does economic growth matter to my constituents if it does not even reach them?
We have heard reports that the Chancellor is considering bringing back regional pay in the Budget in order to deny pay rises to our constituents on a national pay scale. Can the Minister tell us anything about that, and can I urge him to feed back that it would be an absolute disaster for the regions of the country if the Chancellor were to go anywhere near the idea?
The Government’s cuts have not tackled the deficit; they have shifted it on to local authorities and public services, plunging them into crisis, while starving our economy of the patient, long-term investment it needs to thrive. The problems are so stark that the solutions must be radical. The people of Liverpool do not need piecemeal change; they need something much bigger. That is why the next Labour Government will not be satisfied with tinkering around the edges of a rigged economy; they will transform our economy so that it works in the interests of the ordinary people I represent.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) on securing this important debate.
Liverpool is a place I have got to know well, like many others who have spoken today. Part of my constituency lies within the Liverpool city region, and many of my constituents travel to work in or visit Liverpool each day. Many—including my wife—have recent personal or family heritage in Liverpool, and people are well aware of what colleagues have already noted. Liverpool is a city with incredible culture, buildings, beauty—Scouse pride, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) pointed out—and history. It is also a city that has places that are suffering deep and scarring poverty and, disgracefully, 32,000 children are living in poverty. That poverty is made even worse by the Government’s austerity measures, and it looks set to deepen further as a result of the roll-out of universal credit across the city and region.
This afternoon we have heard many examples and arguments for why the roll-out of universal credit must be halted and the policy radically reformed and fixed. We heard many more in the main Chamber last week—in fact, we have heard many over the past few months. Of course, universal credit is not the sole cause or trigger of poverty—I will talk about some of the other causes later—but it is certainly not scaremongering to suggest that rolling out universal credit across Liverpool is likely to make the issues worse and the suffering even greater. There are many reasons why the Government should stop the roll-out, but surely the evidence that more people will be forced to use food banks— 69,000 used them last year alone—simply to feed themselves and their children is reason enough.
My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree said that people in Liverpool want jobs, skills and investment. They certainly do not want to root through bins for food and vital goods. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton rightly pointed out that austerity is a political choice, and that it is driving what we see on the streets of Liverpool. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Dame Louise Ellman) pointed out that only 16%—a stark figure—of young people aged 16 to 24 are in work. My hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) made a strong case that the end-of-austerity cheque should deal with the growth in food bank use and the decimation of public services in Liverpool. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) pointed out that this is a debate we really should not be having today—or on any day—and said that universal credit is exacerbating the crisis on the streets of Liverpool.
My question to the Minister is this. If the unacceptable delays, the growing rent arrears in Riverside and elsewhere, and the numerous tales of mistakes and misapplications are not enough to make the Government stop and think again, what will it take? It seems that the prospect of children going hungry in Liverpool and elsewhere is not enough to stop universal credit. That should shame the Minister, the Government and all of us in the fifth richest country in the world, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby said.
Of course, poverty is not caused solely by universal credit, although it often rises as a result. Good, well-paid, fulfilling and decent jobs can help to tackle poverty, and we have often heard Conservative Ministers talk about work being the best route out of poverty. The question, however, is, what kind of work? We hear lots of spin from the Government about jobs and employment, but beneath the headlines lies a story of insecurity, low pay and wages falling far short of decent expectations. Real-terms weekly pay is £11 a week lower than it was a decade ago. Business surveys suggest that there are 1.8 million people on zero-hours contracts in the economy, and almost 800,000 consider such posts to be their main job. The draconian cuts to in-work allowances from universal credit is a retrograde step. The National Audit Office says that there is no evidence that it leads to employment growth.
Having focused on what little the Government are doing to tackle poverty, I want to take the opportunity to welcome what Liverpool City Council and many other councils across the country are doing to blunt the ever sharper knife of Tory austerity and to support those in need. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree and others mentioned the work of Liverpool’s Labour Mayor, Joe Anderson. The Labour council and its city region Mayor are helping to tackle poverty. They have spent £12 million on services for homeless people, £3.5 million protecting 42,000 people from the full impact of Government reductions in council tax support, £2.7 million on almost 13,000 crisis payments to help people with the cost of food, fuel, clothing and furniture, and £2.2 million on 8,300 discretionary housing payments to people affected by welfare reform and hardship. They have set up a £2 million hardship fund that will run from 2017 to 2020 to help struggling residents. As has been rightly pointed out, all children’s centres remain open. There is a demand for real powers to transform the economy into one that offers high-quality, decent and fairly paid jobs—something that Whitehall control has so far failed to deliver.
My hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, Walton and for Garston and Halewood mentioned those actions in the main Chamber last week, and they are welcomed by all Members from Liverpool. Once again, it is left to our councils—usually, our Labour councils—to help those most in need. They have already faced draconian cuts—Liverpool’s budget has been cut by 64%, or £440 million, in a decade—and yet the Liverpool Mayor is still determined to tackle the root causes of this shocking poverty. Meanwhile, the Government have cut taxes for the richest and wealthiest businesses and corporations—a £110 billion giveaway.
We accept that eradicating poverty requires more than one approach. It requires many partners inside and outside Government. We also know that two key elements are fundamental to the approach: a genuine desire from the Government to do it and the willingness to prioritise that desire and make decisions to underpin it. The Government’s record show that they have neither.
Dan Carden
My hon. Friend will have heard the Government announce, over the summer, their intention to halve homelessness by the end of this Parliament and eradicate it by 2027. As charities that deal with homelessness and crisis said at the time, unless the Government deal with the problems in our economy and put together a cross-departmental strategy, the idea that they will ever get anywhere near that target is fanciful, because they are dealing only with the results, not the causes.
Mike Amesbury
My hon. Friend makes a very strong case and a fair point.
The Minister has heard my colleagues talk about the extent of poverty and its effect on Liverpool and elsewhere. He has heard the genuine fears that the Government’s current policy direction—their cuts to welfare, nurseries, schools, colleges and local government, and their disastrous approach to Brexit—will make that worse. He has heard about the inequality and the unfairness that people, families and children are suffering in Liverpool and places like it. Their lives and opportunities are defined by their postcode, rather their talent, ambition and dreams. Will he now step back and listen to the reality of life in poverty from real people and real cases, look further than the spin of statistics about the jobs market and the economy, which far too many people see as a world away, and lobby the Chancellor?
The time to act is now. End the cuts that push people into poverty, the benefits freeze and the two-child cap. Stop the damaging, catastrophic roll-out of universal credit, which will make poverty worse in Liverpool and elsewhere. Restore the £3 billion-plus cut from the system made in 2015. Act now and fairly fund public services.
Universal Credit
Dan Carden Excerpts(6 years ago)
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Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to contribute to this very important debate. It is interesting to follow the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham). I am sure 38 Degrees will want to run all their campaigns past him in future. Actually, I think the lines he read out are absolutely true. People are expected to go five weeks without money. I will be responding to those campaigns with sympathy and agreement.
Ministers have taken what was an agreed principle to simplify the benefits system and have lost the support of the House. We have heard Government Members willing to raise criticisms today, but it is a shame that they will not have the courage to support the motion on the Order Paper and to uncover the evidence that Ministers have but the House does not. I raise these issues today because of what I see on the streets of Liverpool and in my office.
I see this issue very much in the context of austerity. Universal credit, since the cuts of the former Chancellor, is now another vehicle for austerity. Those cuts are ploughed on top of 64% cuts to Liverpool’s local authority. There are now reports that Liverpool has the second-highest levels of destitution in the whole UK. Our local authority has to spend £50 million on benefit support services and £3 million on benefit maximisation, and it has spent £1 million over the past two years topping up housing payments for already inadequate benefits to stop people being put on to the streets. That is the context in which universal credit is being implemented in my constituency.
In June, the National Audit Office found:
“Universal Credit is failing to achieve its aims, and there is currently no evidence that it ever will.”
This is not social security as we know it or as it should be. It is not a safety net for our most vulnerable constituents and it is certainly not a welfare state. It is a modern-day digital workhouse for people like my constituent Ann, in Everton, who went 10 weeks without any payment. When she was in distress, she was told to go to the local foodbank. When she could not work the online system, she was sanctioned for three months in a row.
For me, this is all about getting to the bottom of the issue facing our most vulnerable constituents. Nothing less than stopping the roll-out of universal credit to fix the problems will do.
Universal Credit (Liverpool)
Dan Carden Excerpts(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered roll-out of universal credit in Liverpool.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh, although in this debate it will not be possible for me to do justice to the magnitude of concerns that have been raised with me about the imminent full roll-out of universal credit across Liverpool. Disability charities, trade unions, civil servants, housing associations, private landlords, advice agencies, food banks, local councillors and the local authority have all provided me with briefings, statistics and case studies, for which I am grateful. Together, they paint a bleak picture of what lies ahead this autumn.
Starting this month, and continuing into November and December, jobcentre by jobcentre, full service universal credit will be rolled out across my constituency. I am here because of the people I have met in my surgeries and food bank visits, and because of the harrowing stories I have been told. I am here because of the people I have seen—people who are broken and who feel worthless and trapped in a cycle of poverty that they cannot escape. The roll-out of universal credit is only the latest onslaught from a benefits system that is stuck in Victorian times; it is just the latest instalment of austerity for our city—a city that has borne the brunt of eight years of cuts that have hit the most deprived areas the hardest. Our local authority budget has been slashed by 64%—£444 million since 2010—and 40% of children in my constituency are growing up in poverty.
According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Liverpool has the second highest level of destitution of any city in the UK, and there is a lack of basic essentials, including food, shelter and toiletries. That is the climate in which the Government are imposing their flagship welfare policy—a policy that had cross-party support when it was launched in 2011, but is now a byword for institutional incompetence. It is six years behind schedule, universally unpopular and, according to the National Audit Office, likely to cost more than the system it replaces.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
I have a case of a mum who has started a new relationship, and consequently she has been put on to universal credit because her partner, who is from another area, is already on it. Her tax credits were stopped at the end of May, but by 31 August her application still had not started to be administered. If it were not for the mayoral hardship fund, Liverpool’s citizen support scheme and Can Cook, which have fed the family for two months, that family would be absolutely destitute. Has my hon. Friend heard of similar experiences in his constituency?
Dan Carden
I will come on to some of the case studies and personal stories that I have been told. Well-documented design flaws and unresolved administrative issues have seen tens of thousands of claimants plunged into debt arrears and reliance on food banks. My casework is already loaded with people who are struggling to make ends meet, and piling universal credit—a policy that Citizens Advice has called a “disaster waiting to happen”—on to an economic situation that is already bordering on crisis will lead to levels of hardship not seen in the city since the 1980s. This is the last chance to apply the brakes, stop the roll-out of universal credit, and fix the flaws in its design and delivery.
Universal credit lists its stated aims as: to improve work incentives, reduce poverty and simplify the benefit system, making it easier for people to understand, and easier and cheaper for staff to administer. Who could disagree with that? However, the National Audit Office found in June that:
“Universal Credit is failing to achieve its aims, and there is currently no evidence that it ever will.”
Worse still, the evidence on the ground in areas where full service universal credit has been rolled out is clear: not only is universal credit failing to meet its aims, but it is having the opposite effect. It is punishing those in work, exacerbating poverty, and creating an unwieldy, arduous and inefficient system that increases pressures on claimants and staff alike.
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. One flaw in the system concerns the rigidity of the assessment period. I am in correspondence with the Minister of State for Employment on behalf of one of my constituents who is affected by the rule that means that if two sets of earnings are covered by one assessment period, the claimant will get nothing or a reduced amount for the next period. My constituent is already worrying about how she will afford Christmas. Surely that cannot be acceptable in this day and age.
Dan Carden
It is absolutely unacceptable, and Ministers know that the system has major structural problems. Payment of universal credit is 35 days in arrears, which results in the common requirement for an advance payment. One local member of Department for Work and Pensions staff called the five-week wait a “scandal in itself”, and in practice it can take up to 12 weeks before claimants are paid the correct amount. That staff member also told me that the so-called advance payments put claimants even further in debt, because future payments are reduced by up to 40% to claw the money back. That corresponds with data released by Citizens Advice, which shows that more than half its clients who receive universal credit were forced to borrow money while waiting for their first payment. Other problems include payment as a single lump sum, including housing costs, which causes households to choose between rent or food, especially at the outset of the claim.
There is also the online system. We know that 17% of people who earn less than £20,000 never use the internet—I have met people in that situation. One in five disabled people, and two in five of those with learning disabilities, do not have access to the internet, and the DWP’s own analysis shows that just under half of all claimants are unable to register their claim online. How have the Government prepared for the online roll-out in Liverpool? By closing four jobcentres—including two in my constituency—and eight across Merseyside, in the very areas where claimant rates are highest. It beggars belief to take away the very facilities that were established to support those seeking work.
Despite cuts, our local authority has set aside £50 million to protect the most vulnerable people. We have, I believe, one of the best benefit support services in the country, so that when people are in crisis, they can at least access emergency financial support such as discretionary housing payments, the mayoral hardship fund and crisis payments. Liverpool’s benefit maximisation scheme costs £3 million a year, and its specialist advisers last year helped to secure an extra £10.5 million for Liverpool’s families. No ring-fenced money has been provided by the Government for that—the money comes from general funds and reserves. In the last two years, £1 million has been spent topping up discretionary housing payments, and stopping countless people losing their homes before the roll-out of universal credit has even taken place.
Austerity has decimated our local council services, yet for years the local authority has acted as a sticking plaster for the worst effects of austerity. This autumn’s roll-out of universal credit is expected to rip that away, and I am told that it will simply no longer be able to cope. One problem is that the DWP does not currently share data with local authorities, which means that it is impossible to identify and support people with differing needs for support. It shifts the burden of responsibility on to vulnerable people to seek out support services themselves, and the tragic reality is that we simply will not find those people until it is too late—until they have lost their home, until they are on the streets, until we find them in A&E, or until they simply become one more suicide statistic.
We know that nearly three quarters of housing association tenants on universal credit are in debt, compared with less than a third of all other tenants. Riverside Housing Association told me:
“The time of planned rollout is particularly worrying as it comes ahead of Christmas, a time when historically our tenants often struggle financially due to the additional heating costs and the festive season—with debt and arrears increasing.”
The Trussell Trust reports that in the past year food bank referrals rose by 52% in areas where the full service of universal credit was introduced in the previous 12 months, compared with a 13% rise across the UK as a whole. North Liverpool Foodbank says that changes to benefits are the most common crisis suffered by families, and that is before the full service has been rolled out.
In the local private rented sector the situation is even more critical. I spoke to a letting agent based in my constituency who told me that 100% of the agency’s tenants who are on universal credit are now in rent arrears—every one of them. Letting agents complain of ongoing issues in securing direct payment of housing costs under universal credit, even when the tenant has given explicit consent. I was told that one tenant on live service universal credit was £700 in arrears and was moved on to direct payment; then, as soon as full service was rolled out in Bootle, a neighbouring constituency, the direct payments stopped again. The tenant is now £2,500 in arrears. The letting agency told me, as others have, that it is at the point of refusing universal credit claimants altogether.
I do not need a crystal ball to tell the Minister that if the roll-out continues and the Government press ahead, there will be even more people living on the streets. More than 90% of local authorities surveyed by Crisis said they expected the roll-out of universal credit to increase homelessness. Rough sleeping in England has already more than doubled under the present Government. Let us remember that the first claimants to move on to universal credit were single unemployed jobseekers—the so-called easy cases. This autumn people with much more complex circumstances will transfer on to the system. It is a sobering thought that the worst is yet to come. It is a scandal for Ministers to proceed when basic failures in the system have not been fixed.
Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s quite legitimate concerns, but perhaps I can offer a little reassurance following the roll-out that has already happened in Dudley. Many claimants and the jobcentre—particularly in Stourbridge—are seeing that universal credit gives extra flexibility to help cases that simply would not have received the help and appropriate support they needed under the old system. More people—precisely the kind of difficult cases that he refers to—are getting into work and staying in work.
Dan Carden
I can tell the hon. Gentleman categorically that that is not the experience of people moving on to universal credit. The evidence I am giving in my speech does not back it up.
Analysis by Citizens Advice shows that a self-employed worker earning £9,750 a year would be £630 worse off under universal credit than an employee with an identical annual income but paid a regular monthly salary. It is astounding that the Government have overseen an increasingly insecure jobs market, based on bogus self-employment and agency and zero-hours jobs, while putting in place a welfare system that leaves the workers who do those very jobs hundreds of pounds worse off each year.
There are also changes to the work allowance. Mary is a hard-working single parent of three children in Liverpool and under the old system her income was topped up with £48 child benefit each week and a universal credit payment of £885 a month. After the changes, Mary’s salary and child benefit remained the same but her universal credit was cut by £219 a month. It is just another family pushed into hardship.
Yesterday I visited a constituent called Ann, who went on to universal credit when she lost her job as a cleaning supervisor in New Brighton in July 2015. She phoned the Department for Work and Pensions the next day to register a claim and was asked to attend a local jobcentre in Everton. She attended and was advised that she would need to go online to register, but she explained she had never had access to a computer or training in the use of one. She was asked whether she had a relative she could get assistance from. She was never once offered assistance in completing the application, even after she admitted lacking the skills to do so.
Ann attended a universal credit appointment on 18 August and received her first payment on 21 September. She went 10 weeks without receiving any payments and when she was in distress was told to attend the local food bank. She sought the support of local councillors in their surgery, because of the humiliation she felt at her situation and her lack of food. After her claim was live, she had three consecutive months of sanctions because of bewilderment at the system, and lack of understanding of the digital diary. She was then informed that she had to travel to look for jobs, but without any offer of travel expenses up front—all expenses had to be claimed back through receipts.
Ann summed up the experience as humiliating, degrading and utterly confusing—and she was one of the easy claimants selected for live roll-out. She was one of thousands in the city who will have followed a similar path from factory work decades ago to low-skilled work more recently, and who are now on the jobs market with no computer skills to enable them to navigate the system. I am sick of living in a society where we punish people because a broken economy does not provide them with decent jobs. What looks good to Ministers on paper is in reality asking a 60-year-old woman who has worked all her life to spend hours each day walking around a city handing in CVs in shops, begging for jobs. I do not think it is humane or worthwhile for society to be in that position.
I am here today to ask the Minister to apply the brakes—to stop the roll-out of universal credit in Liverpool and fix the flaws in its design and delivery. Outside Whitehall there is total acceptance that the current system will cause untold misery and push communities to breaking point across Liverpool. The Government have thrown away cross-party support for a new benefits model that would simplify the welfare state, and instead have caused chaos. Universal credit could be accepted, but only if it worked as originally intended. Ministers must remove the mandatory waiting period of 35 days; provide additional ring-fenced funding for local authorities based on local need; reverse the cuts to the work allowance and family premium; make sure that families making a claim for universal credit are at least as well off as they were under the previous system; remove the freeze on the benefit allowance and make sure welfare support reflects the needs of families; withdraw the disastrous two-child policy; and carry out a full cumulative impact assessment on the impact of welfare reforms at a local level. Finally, they must ensure that universal credit really does “make work pay”, while also carrying out the statutory duty of care to citizens.
The director general for the universal credit programme is Neil Couling. According to the ministerial code, he has responsibility for its implementation and has the power to pause it. I call on him urgently to use that power. He and Ministers have been warned about the impending crisis if they push ahead. I ask the Minister to step back and evaluate: what is the policy trying to achieve? I understand the predicament that the Department is in. It would cause a headache in Whitehall to pause the roll-out. Changes are deeply embedded, and it would be complex and expensive to stop, but that cannot mean, “Shut your eyes and hope for the best.”
Seven years ago there was cross-party agreement on the principle of simplifying the benefits system and helping people into work. However, the policy has unravelled because it was built on deeply flawed assumptions about what causes unemployment, designed in Whitehall by people who have never experienced poverty. It has become part of an agenda to undermine welfare provision and force the vulnerable and disabled to pay for an economic crisis caused by an elite. It is a joke that the Government talk about making work pay at a time when real wages are lower than they were 10 years ago. The Government have already been forced into a series of changes on universal credit. They backtracked on charging for the claimant helpline, they rolled back the six-week minimum wait—albeit only to five weeks—and they backtracked on 18 to 21-year-olds being excluded from the housing allowance. The Government know that the system is not working.
We urgently need to change the culture of the social security system from one that demonises people who are not in work to one that supports people and communities, that lifts people up rather than kicking them while they are down, and that seeks to improve the pay and conditions of those in work rather than punishing those who are not. Decent wages, lifelong learning and a patient strategy of long-term investment are how we will achieve a prosperous society. I shall continue to make those arguments in this House, but right now I have only one ask for the Minister: pause the roll-out of universal credit in Liverpool; fix it and save my constituents from the inevitable suffering it will unleash.
Guy Opperman
With respect, that is what I am attempting to do and intending to come to. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton raised the issue of local authority funding. The Department for Work and Pensions provides local authorities with UC support funding and new burden funding to take account of additional costs. The local authority should provide the data, and he should be aware that £14 million has been paid out in this tax year alone.
On the managed migration, there was a “Universal Credit programme full Business Case summary” early this year, which showed that when UC is rolled out it will deliver £8 billion worth of benefits to the UK economy every year. The hon. Gentleman mentioned Citizens Advice in his speech; he will be aware that only recently, when the changes were made to universal credit, it was quoted as saying:
“These changes should make a significant difference to the millions of people who will be claiming Universal Credit by the time it’s fully implemented.”
Similarly supportive comments were set out at the time by the Trussell Trust and others.
I will ensure that the Department writes to the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) on the specific point he raised. In relation to the lady from Everton, if he provides the detail to the Department I will ensure that a specific point is raised, and I will also ensure that the point about the constituent case mentioned by the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood is addressed.
It is important to mention that there have been significant changes and a “test and learn” approach to universal credit as it is being rolled out. Changes were made in November last year following the Budget, and the Secretary of State herself made changes in June this year. We have made a commitment that anyone we move onto universal credit without a change of circumstance will have their existing benefit entitlement safeguarded until their circumstances change. That is to accommodate the changes needed; managed migration will be completed in 2023. We have also announced that people on legacy benefits receiving severe disability premium will stay on legacy benefits until we move them, even if they have a change of circumstances, and we will look at protection for people previously in receipt of severe disability premium who have already moved onto universal credit.
Dan Carden
I just want the Minister to answer the points about housing associations and private rented landlords, who are saying they will no longer take universal credit claimants in the private rented sector. What is the Department going to do to talk to housing associations and landlords, and to stop a homelessness crisis hitting our city?
Guy Opperman
I will ensure that the Department gets in contact with the hon. Gentleman to find out the details of which he complains. He will understand that I cannot specifically answer that particular point now, but contact will be made if he provides the explanation of the specific examples that he is concerned about. It is definitely the case, though, that the individual jobcentres are working with the local authorities and with the various charities on an ongoing basis.
To finish, we are in the middle of a fundamental structural reform that is already changing lives. We will continue to work with claimants, partners and hon. Members to resolve the issues and improve universal credit as it is rolled out across the country. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman, who is a worthy successor to his predecessor, on securing today’s debate; it is definitely the case that we call on all hon. Members to get behind this particular revolutionary reform, but I am grateful for the opportunity to set out the position today.
Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).