Universal Credit

David Linden Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Neil Gray]

I have no reason to doubt what the hon. Lady says, except that the experiences of Members on the Opposition Benches are rather different. I point her and her colleagues to my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry), who has been working tirelessly on this not only while he has been a Member of the House but while he was leader of Highland Council, when universal credit was first tested in Highland. He has been knocking against a brick wall trying to get the DWP to listen to the concerns that he has found in his area, and his experience is not the same as the one the hon. Lady says she has had in Redditch.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

I intervene in response to the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), who said how wonderful jobcentres are and how much work they do. I do not know whether she has had the same experience as me, but in my city of Glasgow, the UK Government have closed six jobcentres, and in my area of the east end of Glasgow, they have just butchered three out of four jobcentres. How can we go and find out how things are going in jobcentres, when her Government are busy closing them?

[Neil Gray]

I absolutely concur with my hon. Friend, who has been an assiduous campaigner to protect and save the jobcentres in his constituency. Even at this late stage and after some of their doors have closed, I hope that the Government may listen and finally provide a reprieve.

It is right that we acknowledge the knock-on effect felt by landlords, whose incomes are in turn being squeezed due to tenants falling into arrears because of successive cuts to universal credit. The SNP has continually called for the roll-out of universal credit to be paused and properly fixed. That is not just about reducing the wait time by a week for those receiving universal credit, but about restoring the original principles of universal credit, which have been cut back so far to their roots that they have been battered.

The UK Government’s woeful ignorance on this is shameful. The evidence of the social destruction caused by universal credit in its current form is clear from report after report by expert charities. Such social destruction is not masked by the line, repeated ad nauseam by the Government, that universal credit is getting people into work. It is not much good for people if this is just a shift from out-of-work poverty to in-work poverty. We know there has been a rise in the rate of in-work poverty, and we also know that 67% of children—I repeat, 67% of children—currently living in poverty do so in a family where at least one person works.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

I am mindful of the time, so I will not take up as much of it as I had planned.

It is disappointing that there are now few ways in which the House can express its opinion, but one of those ways is by our debating and voting on statutory instruments. We see time and again on Opposition days the House making its voice clear. In October, the House voted by 299 votes to zero to call for a halt to the roll-out of universal credit, but that did not happen. Conservative Members talk about parliamentary sovereignty and the will of the House being listened to, but they do not then follow through. I am glad, therefore, that we have an opportunity today, on a binding vote, to make our view clear to the Government.

Today we are debating four statutory instruments. I will focus on the one relating to universal credit, but before I do so, I want to touch on childcare vouchers. I and many other Members are worried about the UK Government’s plans to close the childcare voucher scheme, so we urge them to reconsider. I want to draw a contrast with some of the family-friendly policies that we are pursuing north of the border, such as the baby box scheme, which gives children the very best start in life from birth—that sends a strong signal about equality. We have free school meals for children in primaries 1 to 3 and the doubling of childcare provision. On the latter, I must declare an interest, as my son is starting nursery in August, and is very excited about going to Sgòil Àraich Lyoncross. The Scottish Government have made it clear that children should be able to get such childcare, and it is good that we are delivering on that.

I wish to commend the new city government in Glasgow led by Susan Aitken. In the last council budget, they announced that free school meals would be rolled out to primary 4. As someone who is married to a primary school teacher, I know at first hand the importance of schoolchildren having a warm and nutritious meal inside them. I welcome the efforts of Glasgow City Council to tackle holiday hunger as well.

I will focus briefly on universal credit, because I am mindful of the time. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry), who has done a power of work on universal credit since long before it was fashionable to talk about it. He has, I believe, been pursuing the issue since 2013. I think that his work on terminal illness is especially important. There have been some pretty unedifying scenes on both sides of the Chamber today. We should be mindful of the fact that we are talking about real people, and, in particular, about people with terminal illnesses. That message should go to all of us, including me.

I have made it clear to journalists that I have no interest in being on “Newsnight” or “Question Time”, or in clocking up views in Nigeria on YouTube like my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black). I see the job of being a Member of Parliament as being out in the constituency listening to people and hearing about lived experiences. I appreciate that at various points during the debate, the Government will say that the Opposition are scaremongering, and they can say that to a certain extent—they would be expected to say it. However, as a constituency Member of Parliament, I speak to constituents regularly, and people at the Parkhead housing association, the West of Scotland housing association and the Glasgow NE food bank say that universal credit must be halted.