Universal Credit Roll-out

Drew Hendry Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

Thank you for allowing this debate, Mr Speaker, and for your comments about whether it should be held. I also thank the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) for her efforts in bringing this debate to the Chamber today. She said earlier that we cannot wait, and she is absolutely right. We cannot wait any longer for the Government to listen finally to the pleas that are being made. They ignored Parliament last week, but they have been ignoring calls since the pilot programme was launched in Inverness and the Highland Council in 2013.

Between 2013 and 2017, there have been ministerial meetings, letters, questions and debates pleading for action. The hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) said that the problems were evident before the full service roll-out, which was exactly what we found in Inverness. We have been pleading for action. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) spoke eloquently about the people who come to his constituency surgeries in tears, and I have also had many people turn up in tears—the disabled; single mothers; the low-waged. Last Friday, a constituent turned up to my office crying tears of gratitude for, in her words, “ending her nightmare” with universal credit.

The situation is not just about the wait for payments. This is about missed payments, delayed payments, wrong payments, communication blockages and debt by default. Those who talk about scaremongering or do not want to acknowledge that those things are facts should come and listen to the people who experience them from day to day. There is the humiliation of their being asked to go for a work capability assessment when they are clearly unable to work.

[Fiona Onasanya (Peterborough) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this has a tremendous impact on disabled people? We have asked for the roll-out to be paused and rectified instead of continued at a time when the Government know that the system is not working.

[Drew Hendry]

I completely agree, and I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making that point. I have had constituents whose carers have helped them struggle to my constituency surgeries to tell me about their difficulties with the process. People who are blind or incapable of walking unaided are having to go for work capability assessments. That is humiliating and degrading, and the roll-out should be paused. Those things should be fixed or taken out of the system.

[Mr Paul J. Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Government have lauded the fact that the system for processing universal credit will be entirely online, but 35% of people do not have access to the internet in my constituency, which has one of the highest claimant counts in Scotland. Surveys by Citizens Advice have found that 32% of people will be totally unable to access the system and that another 32% will have great difficulty in doing so. This is just a Kafkaesque nightmare that further frustrates, demoralises and depresses the poorest and most vulnerable in our society.

[Drew Hendry]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution, and I completely agree. I have experience of exactly the same—

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Drew Hendry]

I am going to answer the—

[Rachel Maclean]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I have said this before, but I will gently say it again for the benefit of new Members: a Member cannot be expected to give way to a second Member while responding to an intervention from the first. It is just a matter of timing. That is all. I understand the hon. Lady’s commitment, but we have to do these things in an orderly way.

[Drew Hendry]

I was just clarifying that I have experienced exactly the same in my constituency, where mobile phone coverage still lags behind, particularly in our rural areas. This is not only about people’s inability to get online; people are unable to get on a bus to actually get to a jobcentre to use its facilities. Those bus services sometimes do not exist.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

I commend my hon. Friend on his work in Inverness, which everybody in Parliament admires. When he mentioned jobcentres, I noticed the Minister for Employment shaking his head, but he wants to close three of the four jobcentres in Glasgow East, where digital exclusion is a massive problem. Does my hon. Friend share my concern?

[Drew Hendry]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. It beggars belief that jobcentres will be closed during this process. Moving on—

[Rachel Maclean]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Drew Hendry]

I am going to make a little progress.

I want to discuss some of the effects that have occurred in my constituency since 2013. This is not new to us; we have experienced things on a daily basis. Over 60% of my casework—this is coming to everybody—is made up of universal credit issues. This is an incredible drain on the resources of my staff. The jobcentre staff are working as hard as they possibly can, as are staff at the citizens advice bureau and all the other agencies, including food banks, which are having to deal with the collateral damage. The use of food banks is being driven up by universal credit. If anyone on the Government Benches cares to listen to the people at the sharp end, they will understand that that is a fact of life. By the way, if someone is going to donate to food banks, please take UHT milk and tinned meat, because those are the kinds of things that they desperately need. The chair of the Scottish Welfare Fund told me in the past week that people are now going to food banks for food that does not need to be cooked so that they can save money on electricity and avoid running up bills. How damning is that?

I agree with you, Mr Speaker, that the Minister for Employment is a gracious gentleman. I have spoken to him across the Chamber about this issue on many occasions, but now is the time to listen to the experts and to those who are actually experiencing the effects of this. Now is the time to pause this shambolic, chaotic roll-out, and to take the trouble to fix it. Now is the time to listen to the people who are struggling through against the increasing poverty to which they are being subjected. Please, come to my summit in Inverness, listen to the agencies, hear what these people have to say, and get them involved in the process of sorting this out so that people can live in dignity.