Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Carden Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Kit Malthouse
The proportion of people in absolute poverty is now at a record low, with 1 million fewer people and 300,000 fewer children in absolute poverty since 2010. I cannot at this moment recall the number of households, but I will write to my hon. Friend with that number.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
There are just three case examiners working on 2,841 WASPI cases. The average wait for a complaint is 36 weeks, and last year 687 complaints took more than 43 weeks. Why are Ministers treating WASPI women with such disdain?
UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
Dan Carden Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
In Liverpool, when a constituent tries to appeal one of the rulings of an assessment centre, there is a nine-month wait at Liverpool tribunal services. The case that I raised with the Prime Minister of my constituent Anthony has been resolved individually, but thousands of constituents are affected.
Rosie Duffield
I have heard of similar waiting times, too. It is really distressing and adds to all the trauma that has been going on. I will give an example: Julius Holgate, who is a double leg amputee, won an appeal. The Department for Work and Pensions told him that he was fit to work because he could
“climb stairs with his arms.”
Because he lost his benefits, Julius resorted to selling his belongings in order to survive. The DWP claims that this was a clerical error, but in reality, it was an error caused by a lack of humanity.
Article 28 of the UN recommendations calls on the UK Government to ensure that all eligibility criteria and assessments for PIP, employment and support allowance and universal credit are in line with the social model of disability. When is that being done? Despite the repeated, serious and notorious assessment failures by Atos and Capita—the outsourced companies that conduct the assessment—the Government have renewed their contracts to run the assessment process for two more years. These organisations have repeatedly failed to meet their target of 97% acceptable tests, and 100,000 people have won appeals against their assessments. How much is this flawed system costing the Government? If we ignore the human element just for a second and question how much each reassessment and court challenge costs, surely we can agree that this money would be better spent on rolling out decent provisions for the disabled and on remedying those affronts to human rights by introducing a holistic, bespoke assessment service that includes a home visit.
The PIP assessment system is highly traumatic and often misassesses; in January of this year, it was ruled by our own courts to be severely in need of remedy and review. In January this year, the High Court ruled that the PIP system is “blatantly discriminatory” against people with mental health conditions. That criticism is echoed by many mental health and disability organisations. I am sure we all appreciate that not all wounds and maladies are necessarily physical and observable. A single-day assessment is therefore a ludicrous way of properly gauging whether a person is in need of financial assistance because of mental health conditions.
It is high time that this Government turned their focus away from tax breaks for bankers towards a system of disability welfare that is, at the very least, in line with basic human rights outlined by the UN. The convention needs to become part of UK law. The UN committee noted last year that there had not been a full review of the UK’s laws and policies in the light of the convention. There is not enough information on what the UK is doing to stop disabled people being negatively affected as the UK leaves the EU. A statement by Inclusion London explains:
“Disabled People’s organisations are seriously disappointed by the Government response and its failure to adequately take on board any of the UN inquiry recommendations. This response brings into question the Government’s commitment to the progressive realisation of Disabled people’s rights.”
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Cheryl. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) on securing such an important debate.
My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) hit the nail on the head in her speech: the report is a condemnation of the Government. It cannot be emphasised enough just how damning the 2016 UN report is. Conservative Members can talk all they want, with weasel words, about the system getting better, but we know that that is not the case—certainly not in constituencies such as mine in north Liverpool, which is one of the most deprived in the country. I want to tell the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) that we have had our two jobcentres closed. The council has worked so hard—tirelessly—to develop co-location plans and put any proposal in front of the Government to save those jobcentres, to absolutely no avail. I wish him better in Henley, but it certainly has not worked in north Liverpool.
The chairwoman of the UN’s Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities described the Government’s treatment of sick and disabled people as a “human catastrophe”. That is not poetry or a rhetorical flourish; that language is used deliberately and precisely, based on the weight of evidence behind the report. That report came to the conclusion that the Government’s welfare cuts have resulted in “grave and systematic violations” of the human rights of disabled people. It is a national scandal, and one that I see in my surgeries every single week. I am going to talk about a few cases that I have had to deal with in recent months. The situation should be a wake-up call to the Government, but they learn no lessons. My constituency casework is loaded with complaints relating to personal independence payments. Instead of supporting people, the process is dehumanising and inaccurate, and it exacerbates the health conditions that my constituents suffer from.
It is no surprise that there is widespread distrust of the assessment, when 68% of PIP decisions that are taken to tribunals are overturned. As I said earlier, that means a nine-month wait to get the right decision and, often, to get the original decision overturned. In that time people lose their mobility vehicles—at what cost to Government, when they must return them? Something that I have seen happen in the system—and I wonder whether it is systematic—is people going from a low rate of care with high mobility to a high rate of care with low mobility. That seems to happen in case after case, because if someone’s care rate goes up they get a couple of quid extra a week, but if they lose their high-rate mobility they lose their car and their ability to leave the house—they lose their ability to exist.
At Prime Minister’s questions on 25 April, at column 879, I challenged the Prime Minister on a specific case—that of Anthony, who has a chronic, debilitating illness. After his PIP assessment he had a nine-month wait. Once that was raised in Parliament, the DWP intervened to overturn the decision. However, I see that every week—the Prime Minister is asked about this issue, and it is always an individual case. Well, it is not an individual case—it is built into the system. I should like to know what work the Minister is doing with the Ministry of Justice about tribunal waits. Is she working on that? There must be investment in the court system if the problem is to be resolved. I do not see any work being done on it at all.
The Government’s contractors, Atos, Capita and Maximus, have consistently failed to meet basic performance standards. One of my constituents was asked by an assessor about her cerebral palsy—a lifelong condition from birth. She was asked how long she had had it and whether it would get better. What on earth is going on, and what do the Government do when such cases are brought to light? Several other people have told me that the information in their assessment report was inaccurate and did not reflect what was said in the assessment, but for some of my constituents even getting that far is a challenge. My office has been inundated with reports of the unsuitability of assessment centres for disabled people. The range of problems includes a lack of suitable parking, no drop-kerb for wheelchairs and no disabled access button to open doors. A report released this month by Muscular Dystrophy UK found that two in five respondents had been sent to an assessment centre that was not accessible for disabled people. You could not make this stuff up. It is not a matter of individual cases, one by one. There is a systemic problem at the heart of the Government’s policy, and until they wake up to that fact nothing will improve.
Dan Carden
I will not.
The pointless reassessments of people with severe, long-term or progressive conditions are cruel, and an absurd waste of resources. I have a constituent with Down’s syndrome whose payments stopped after she was transferred to PIP, as did those of another constituent, who has multiple sclerosis. I welcome the announcement this week that the Government are preparing to end such unnecessary reviews of people with severe or progressive conditions, but that should not have taken the determined effort of disability campaigners. The Government need to understand that what they are doing is already debilitating for the people in question. Having to be part of national and local campaigns just to get basic human dignity in the assessment process is outrageous.
In any case, it is it is simply not enough to tinker around the edges. The truth is that all the problems are not glitches in the system. They are the system itself. Research published this month by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that almost 650,000 people with physical or mental health problems were destitute in the UK last year. That means being so poor that they cannot afford essentials such as heating, regular meals or basic toiletries. The systematic impoverishment and denial of basic rights highlighted in the UN report and others are part of what we now know to be a “hostile environment”, not just in one or two Departments but across the board. If a society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable, what does that say about ours?
We must treat disabled people, and the vulnerable or dispossessed, with dignity, and it is absurd to think that we can do that when we have a programme of austerity and cuts in local authorities and across the board. That is what the report signals. Not only does the Government’s austerity agenda harm communities and society; it hits the most vulnerable and the poorest hardest.
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Cheryl. I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield), first for securing this important debate and secondly for the incredibly powerful speech she gave. She was right to highlight that no Government should introduce legislation that discriminates against disabled people. She rightly stated that the Government’s record is a national shame, and highlighted the dire inequalities in social security and access to justice, the increase in poverty, and the lack of access to information. There are huge difficulties in access to digital information, as my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) highlighted, and alternative formats for people living with sight loss are lacking. My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury was right to call out the fact that there is a lack of legislation covering intersectional discrimination.
I also want to pay tribute to some of my other colleagues, including my hon. Friends the Members for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) and for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden). My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) made a powerful speech. She has led the way and has held the Government to account powerfully for many years. I thank her for all the work she has done and will continue to do. She rightly highlighted that the Government chose not to include the charter of fundamental rights in the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, which is a shame. My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Fiona Onasanya) shared the powerful testimonies of some of her constituents. I thank everybody for all their efforts. It is right to point out that this is a shame, and there is no other way of looking at it.
The UK was once at the forefront of disability rights: 48 years ago, we passed the groundbreaking Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970. It was led by Lord Alf Morris, who shortly afterwards became the first Minister for Disabled People—I am honoured to be in that shadow role today. That legislation was a response to disability campaigners calling attention to the deep and pervasive injustices that disabled people face. In December 2007, we became signatories to the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, which committed us to progressively realising the rights of disabled people—our rights to live independently, to be included in the community and to have access to education and justice. After eight years of brutal Tory cuts to disabled people’s social security, of increasingly cruel and degrading assessments and sanctions, and of being stigmatised by Government Ministers, disabled people know that the Government have not been defending our rights. The UN CRPD committee found that disabled people’s rights have been “gravely and systematically violated”. It is difficult to overstate the significance of that judgment.
The UK was not merely the first country to be found in breach of the convention’s obligations; we were the first ever to be investigated. Over the past eight years, we have seen not the progressive implementation of disabled people’s rights, but their unprecedented erosion and violation. The committee found that Departments are grossly failing disabled people.
The brutal cuts to disabled people’s social security have made a mockery of article 19, on the right to live independently and in the community, and article 28, on the right to an adequate standard of living. The Welfare Reform Act 2012 alone cut £28 billion from social security. Half of people in poverty are now either disabled or living with someone who is disabled. Almost a quarter of disabled people are now forced to miss meals because of economic hardship, and one in five cannot pay to heat their homes. Such drastic cuts to social security led the UN committee to find that disabled people were the single biggest group affected by Tory austerity policies.
The UN said that the systematic impoverishment of disabled people was an entirely predictable effect of the Government’s austerity policies. It was, of course, predicted by disability groups, but the Government ignored it and refused to carry out a full cumulative impact assessment of the cuts.
Dan Carden
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is disappointing and outrageous that the Government have wasted more than £100 million on pointless appeals and on putting disabled people through a nightmare as they try to access the benefits they deserve?
Marsha De Cordova
My hon. Friend is absolutely right.
Will the Government commit to carry out a cumulative assessment of their tax and social security reforms since 2010? In addition to the devastating cuts and suspicion, disabled people have been endlessly mistreated by the chaotic Department for Work and Pensions. High Court judgments have repeatedly found that the DWP has blatantly discriminated against disabled people. Only last week, it was found that the cutting of disability premiums from universal credit was “unlawfully discriminatory”. There has been “blatant discrimination” against PIP claimants, and employment and support allowance has been continuously underpaid.
The UN report found that disabled people are being undermined not just by the social security failings, but by the lack of social care funding. Since 2009, the number of disabled people receiving social care has fallen by nearly 30%. The UN report highlights that social care is vital, and that it allows many disabled people to live independently. Will the Minister outline whether the Government’s forthcoming Green Paper will include working-age adults? I asked the Secretary of State for Health that question on Monday but did not get a full answer.
On the right to work, the Government have not done enough to remove the barriers that disabled people face. There is a lack of high-quality impairment-specific support. The Government’s flagship Disability Confident scheme does not measure the number of disabled people it has directly helped to move into work. Access to Work must be improved, extended and better publicised. Will the Minister consider removing the discriminatory cap?
Signatories to the CRPD are obliged to promote inclusive education. Under the Government, there has been regression and an increase in the number of special school places. What is the Minister doing to encourage her colleagues to improve inclusive education? In recent months, the Government have created a cross-ministerial body that is supposed to promote disability issues across Government, but at the same time they have cut the number of staff at the Office for Disability Issues. As my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth asked, what is the group’s scope? Where are its published terms of reference?
The Government are helping to organise a global summit in July, but why should any other state take them seriously on disability rights when they are systematically violating the rights of disabled people and continue to ignore the UN’s recommendations? When will the Government publish their response to the UN’s report?
When we get into power, the Labour Government will incorporate the convention into UK law, scrap the punitive sanctions regime, and replace the assessment regime with a more holistic, supportive assessment framework. It is a shame on the Government that we have to stand here today and debate this issue once again. They must take heed and listen.
Personal Independence Payments
Dan Carden Excerpts(6 years, 3 months ago)
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Marsha De Cordova
My hon. Friend, too, makes a valid point. We have to look at the policy intention behind PIP’s introduction—to make savings and to reduce the number of disabled people who were entitled to the benefit.
The assessment framework creates a series of financial problems. Poor-quality decision making has led to disabled people losing vital financial support. The evidence is damning—it is there for all to see. When decisions are challenged, in 68% of cases taken to tribunal the finding is in favour of the claimant. That indicates that there is a problem. The process is lengthy and stressful, and many people do not know how to challenge a decision or what they need to do, so many will go without and lose that financial support.
If a claimant wants to challenge a PIP decision, they must first ask for a mandatory reconsideration, as my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham discussed in detail. That was supposed to improve the claims process, but in reality, it has had the opposite effect. Many disability organisations have noted the number of decisions on claims that have passed through the supposedly rigorous mandatory reconsideration stage, but have gone on to be overturned at tribunal.
According to the Department’s own figures, about 20% of PIP MR cases lead to the decision being revised. It seems that the appeal tribunal process is being used as a backstop for poor decisions that should have been resolved at the initial stage or at the mandatory reconsideration.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
My constituent, Anthony, who visited my surgery on Friday, has a chronic illness. He has been through the process up to the point that my hon. Friend describes and he is awaiting a date for the appeal court. He will lose his car in April. He has been to advice centres to seek advice, but they are full with a backlog, so he has now come to me. Without a date for the appeal process, what can be done and what should the Government do? He faces months and months of distress.
Marsha De Cordova
Perhaps the Minister can clarify what my hon. Friend’s constituent should do. We cannot have individuals losing their vehicles unnecessarily.
Poor decision making is taking place. It has become so bad that the most senior tribunal judge said that the evidence provided by the Department was so poor that it would be “wholly inadmissible” in any other court. There has been a 900% increase in complaints about PIP.
I will talk briefly about the High Court decision. There was an urgent question yesterday, but I am not sure that the Minister answered all the points that were made. The regulations were introduced to reduce the number of claimants who qualify for PIP. The High Court said that they were “blatantly discriminatory” against people with mental health conditions. What is most scary is that but for the High Court decision, the Government could have just carried on as usual.
Universal Credit Roll-out
Dan Carden Excerpts(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Margaret Greenwood
My hon. Friend makes a very strong point and I thank her for it.
Sir John Major recently called the roll-out of universal credit operationally messy, socially unfair and unforgiving. A former Government official, Dame Louise Casey, likened it to jumping off a cliff. Members are extremely concerned about what universal credit means for their constituents. Indeed, 12 Members from the Government Benches have written an open letter to the Secretary of State, calling on him to pause the roll-out, and their concern is widely shared around the House.
In response to concerns raised last week, we heard the Secretary of State reassure us that those who go on to universal credit are more likely to be working six months later than they would be had they been on legacy benefits, and that they are also more likely to be progressing in work. However, his statistics date from 2015 when universal credit claimants were, on the whole, single unemployed jobseekers, whereas the benefit is now being rolled out to people with much more complex circumstances. Furthermore, his statistics dated from before the cuts to work allowances were introduced in April 2016.
In response to concern from all parts of the House about what is happening now, the Secretary of State said that universal credit is about ensuring that our constituents are in a stronger financial position—
Margaret Greenwood
I cannot give way, as I must make progress.
The reality, according to the Trussell Trust, is that food bank referrals have increased by more than double the national average in areas in which the universal credit full service has been rolled out. The Peabody Trust says that the arrears rate for its tenants in receipt of universal credit is three times that for tenants unaffected by universal credit. Half of families in arrears under universal credit have said that their rent arrears started after they had made a claim.
The Secretary of State said that if tenants have a reasonable expectation of receiving housing costs as part of their universal credit payment, the landlord should not take action and the tenant should not face eviction. If only it were that simple. Research by the Residential Landlords Association published in August found that 29% of landlords had taken action to evict a tenant on housing benefit or universal credit in the past 12 months and that arrears were the main reason for doing so. It also found that two in three private landlords were more reluctant to rent to claimants of universal credit because of their concerns about arrears.
The Secretary of State presented advance payments as the answer to the problems of delays in universal credit, but advance payments amount to only 50% of two weeks’ payments of the claimant’s estimated universal credit. He wants to raise awareness of advance payments, but if half of the claimants are already taking advance payments even before he has started, people are clearly struggling to get through the waiting period.
Organisations such as Citizens Advice have been sceptical that advance payments are the solution because they see the reality of what it is like to cope with no income for the six weeks or more wait without savings. As Members of Parliament, we are here to serve the people who live in our constituencies. It is our job to take the Government to task when they get it wrong, and on universal credit, they have got it seriously wrong—wrong in the design and wrong in the delivery. Let us look at the design first.
The flaws in the design of universal credit are many. The infamous six-week wait is a built-in pathway to problem debt. Universal credit is meant to mirror the world of work, but waiting six weeks or more to be paid does not, especially where people are used to being paid weekly or fortnightly by an employer. When I asked DWP what percentage of UC claimants receiving in-work support are paid monthly, the answer I received was:
“We do not have quality assured data on the payment cycles of universal credit claimants who are in work or for those who were in work before they claimed.”
Then there is the payment of the housing element directly to the claimant, not the landlord, putting vulnerable claimants at risk of eviction and exploitation. The difficulty in arranging alternative payments has also been described. The two-child limit means that a new baby in a family that already has two children will not have the same social security support as their brothers or sisters because the family will not qualify for tax credits or universal credit for that child, with the unacceptable implication that some children are valued more than others. There is the minimum income floor for the self-employed, who the Government assume, for the purposes of universal credit, earn the equivalent of 35 hours a week on the national living wage after a year, even though around half of self-employed people earn less than two thirds of median weekly earnings.
The cuts to work allowances will leave some families up to £2,100 a year worse off even after the changes to the taper rate announced last year. The failure to provide work allowances for second earners brings into question the effectiveness of work incentives under universal credit, particularly given the importance of a second earner to address in-work poverty. The withdrawal of severe disability premium in universal credit means that some disabled people can be up to £62 a week worse off if they move on to universal credit because of changes in their circumstances such as moving from a live to a full service area or claiming another benefit such as PIP.
Paying universal credit to only one person in the household is a risky experiment, with scant regard as to what that might mean to victims of domestic violence and their children. There is an insistence that claims in the full service should be made and managed online, despite the fact that the most recent Government figures—from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in 2011—show that 5 million people in the UK lack basic literacy skills, 8 million lack basic numeracy skills and nearly 5 million had below entry-level IT skills. Many people on low income cannot afford internet access, or face increased difficulty accessing it because of the closure of libraries and jobcentres over the course of seven years of Conservative austerity. In any case, public libraries are not always the most appropriate places to fill in forms with personal information. We are all aware that broadband access can be even poorer in rural areas.
The list of design flaws is a long one. Then, of course, there are the failures in the implementation of universal credit under this Government. Not only have the Government designed a policy with the six-week delay built into the system, pushing many claimants into debt, but the Government are failing in the delivery too. The Secretary of State boasts that 80% of new claimants are paid on time, but this is hardly something to boast about. By this reckoning, we can expect that 80,000 people will have to wait longer than six weeks to receive their money over the next six months, and 40,000 will have to wait longer than 10 weeks. Surely the Secretary of State does not find that acceptable.
There is a crisis of problem debt, with 8.3 million people in the UK struggling with debt and £200 billion of unsecured consumer credit debts. On Monday, the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority warned that increasing numbers of young people are having to borrow to cover basic living costs. One of the most basic living costs of all is housing. Yet, young people aged 18 to 21 do not qualify for any help with housing costs in universal credit full service areas unless there are special circumstances. We now have a complicated patchwork of social security, where people with the same circumstances may have very different entitlement to social security depending on whether they are on legacy benefits or universal credit, and whether they live in a live or a full service area. Even DWP staff often find it difficult to know which benefit people should be claiming.
Despite all those issues, the Government have decided to accelerate the roll-out of universal credit to 50 jobcentres a month, at the same time as closing one in 10 jobcentres across the UK and a number of back offices. There are real question marks over whether the Department has the resources to deliver its universal credit programme, especially in the light of the 800 redundancies it has announced. Other problems include the online system struggling to accept evidence of people’s identity and childcare receipts when they are not on headed note paper. Citizens Advice highlighted the case of a mother who lost her job because she had to stay at home and look after her children when her universal credit was not paid in time.
The Government tell us they have a policy of test and learn when it comes to universal credit. Well, it is certainly testing people who have to wait weeks on end to receive their money. The testing is on real people and the consequences can be devastating, yet we see little evidence of learning—but there is still time and I urge the Secretary of State to learn, because the human cost of failing to take action would be great.
Universal credit was intended to be simpler, but we now have an incredibly complicated system where the nature of someone’s entitlement to social security has become a postcode lottery. It is vital that in the future we have a social security system that is robust enough to serve us well in the face of all the challenges before us, including the current insecurity of the labour market, the changing shape of families and the many challenges automation will bring as we move into the fourth industrial revolution.
Damian Hinds
Of course I gave way to the right hon. Gentleman, who is the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee. To respond to his question, of course we do not expect that to happen. What universal credit does is make it more straightforward for people to go into work at all times of the year. Fundamentally, we are not looking at a great acceleration in the roll-out. I will be happy to follow up with him after the debate. We will provide further progress updates in the weeks ahead and I look forward to active dialogue with colleagues.
Our current system is at once too complex and too uniform. It holds people back because of the perceived risk of ending a benefit claim to go into work, and it is not always obvious how much better off they will be. All too often, once they are in work people are caught by the hours rules in tax credits. I think we have all met people in our surgeries who are stuck on 16 hours a week when they want to be able to get on, progress in their career and provide more for their family. That was illustrated well by my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) and my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall).
Those and similar features have been endemic in our system for decades, and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) and Lord Freud for their insight and determination not merely to regret those things but to reform them; not just to critique the system but to change it. My hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar) put it well when he said that it was not so much that the old system was designed badly, but that as a whole the old system was not designed at all.
The new system, universal credit, simplifies by merging six benefits into one and asking people to deal with only one part of Government, not three. The hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) reminded us of the value of simplicity, which is true both for the individual and for the taxpayer. The core design element is that the system looks back over what someone has earned over a month and automatically adjusts payments based on that. It erases the binary distinction between in work and out, and removes the need to flip from one benefit to another, then back again. The consistent taper rate means that people will always know that they will be better off in work and with every extra pound they earn. Universal credit prepares people for work, helps them into work and helps them to get on in work.
My hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin) reminded us what happens when implementation is rushed, as we saw with working tax credit in the early 2000s. By contrast, the implementation of universal credit is happening over nine years. It is now available in the live service version in every part of the country. In July, we introduced the full service to 29 jobcentres across the country; feedback was positive and system performance improved. There has been much talk about pauses. Well, in August and September, we had one of our pre-planned pauses in the roll-out.
These pauses ensure that we do have the opportunity to learn lessons, build improvements into the system, and address any issues. From this month, we will be scaling up roll-outs to about 50 jobcentres a month. After another substantial planned pause in the programme’s roll-out, managed migration begins in in June 2019. The whole roll-out will complete in 2022. It is all being done in a careful, co-ordinated way to ensure that improvements can always be made along the way.
Universal credit is designed to mirror the way that most people in work are paid, which is, these days, monthly. The first payment period is five or six weeks, depending on the individual’s circumstances.
Damian Hinds
I am sorry, but I cannot.
Our latest data show that about 80% of new claims were paid in full and on time, and over 90% of people receive some payment at the due date. Among all claims, 92% are paid in full and 96% are getting some payment by the due date. Advances are available, paid within five working days and, in an emergency, on the same day. They are paid back over six to nine months. For vulnerable claimants, it is possible to have rent paid direct to the landlord, and 34% of social sector tenants on universal credit have this arrangement right now. Our trusted partner system will further streamline the system for landlords to identify tenants who should be on those direct payments. My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) asked about publishing the schedule of when that is coming to different housing associations. I cannot see him in his place, but I say to him that we will do that. Split payments and more frequent payments are also available where needed.
I want to respond very briefly to some of the points made from the Floor. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), whom I cannot see in her place—this important point was also raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Seely)—asked about privacy and security arrangements for victims of domestic violence. I will look into that further, and I would welcome the opportunity to discuss it with her.
The question of universal support came up, including from my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green. I commit to him that we absolutely continue to focus on that and see the absolute value of it. My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) reminded us of the valuable role that can be played by partners, including housing associations.
The hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) questioned whether we were cutting staff. We are not cutting staff—we are increasing our staffing numbers in parallel with universal credit roll-out. I would like to follow up the specific case she mentioned with her separately, if that is all right. I will also perhaps speak separately about it to the hon. Member for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield).
My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) talked about emergency temporary accommodation. He has been very assiduous on these matters. We have listened to concerns on this, and we are looking closely at it. We will work with the sector to find a solution. We are also looking at the APA—alternative payment arrangement—process in the private rented sector in order to improve it, and we continue to look at the issues around housing benefit debt recovery.
IT access and capability was rightly mentioned by several Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Mims Davies). Digital skills are very important. That is why we have the extra support and help in jobcentres, with PCs there. My hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) pointed out that those IT skills are also incredibly important these days in applying for jobs and when in work.
The hon. Member for Midlothian (Danielle Rowley) asked about childcare. I can confirm that within universal credit the maximum reimbursable amount rises from 70% to 85%, and that is on top of the doubling of free provision for three-year-olds and four-year-olds. The hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) asked about premium phone numbers. I share his abhorrence of companies who do this—third parties who pretend to be something they are not. I will work with him to try to find a solution. It is not absolutely clear that anything illegal is going on, but I agree that we must try to find a way to address it.
Many hon. Members made passionate speeches about social justice and child poverty. We heard excellent speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley), for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke), for Angus (Kirstene Hair), for Southport (Damien Moore), for Mansfield (Ben Bradley), and for Totnes (Dr Wollaston). We all care passionately about these subjects. Although it is very welcome that child poverty has come down, there is more to do. We know that work is key. There are 608,000 fewer children in working households since 2010, but universal credit will help further.
Yes, this is a fundamental—