Department for Work and Pensions: Members’ Representations

Debate between Emma Dent Coad and Kate Osamor

Wednesday 16th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Kate Osamor]

My hon. Friend makes a valuable point, which I will come to later. I thank her for her contribution.

There is considerable anxiety among the 16,630 house- holds in Edmonton accessing at least one kind of social support that will be replaced by universal credit. By August 2018, around 2,750 households in Edmonton had been moved to the new system. Many of my constituents have reported multiple significant problems in dealing with universal credit, from understanding the new system, to the transition to universal credit, the excruciating application process, receiving payments, which are mainly late, and the ongoing support—in short, the entire system.

My constituents are not alone in their assessment of universal credit. The National Audit Office said that the universal credit programme was

“driven by an ambitious timescale”

and had

“suffered from weak management, ineffective control and poor governance.”

According to the Child Poverty Action Group, difficulties with claiming universal credit mean that currently one in five applications fails.

A vulnerable constituent of mine made a claim for universal credit in July 2018. It was initially incorrectly refused, even though he had provided all the necessary documentation. Only after challenging the decision was his application accepted in September 2018. Despite the appeal being upheld, he did not receive any universal credit payments until December 2018—almost five months after his initial claim. Let that sink in: it was five months after the initial claim, and he was an extremely vulnerable person.

[Emma Dent Coad (Kensington) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the bureaucracy facing claimants, including appeals, is too much to bear for people going through such difficulties, and that our constituency staff teams are constantly asked for help that they are unable to give?

[Kate Osamor]

My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. I will come on to the demand for the legal representation that vulnerable people need.

As I said, my constituent, who was a very vulnerable person, received his first payment five months after his initial claim, and that was only after the relentless persistence of my office. I cannot convey the hardship that my constituent went through in those five months. He was let down by a shoddy assessment of his application.

In areas such as Edmonton, with such high levels of inequality, the suffering has been more intense and more widespread. My role is to fight for equality for all. Achieving equality is not just the right thing to do; the evidence is clear that more equal societies are better, healthier and safer. Such societies have fewer health issues and social problems, are less internally divided, and are better able to sustain economic growth.

On 11 January this year, three single mums defeated the DWP at the High Court over issues with universal credit. They were missing out on hundreds of pounds a year because of the farcical way the DWP calculates income. Lord Justice Singh and Mr Justice Lewis ruled that the DWP had been wrongly interpreting the universal credit regulations. In their judgment, they described the universal credit income assessment process as “odd in the extreme”. Can the Minister confirm whether the Secretary of State will appeal that High Court judgment?

Universal credit is complicit in the Government’s punishing austerity policy, which has increased child poverty to 4 million and rising. The Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts a 7% rise in child poverty between 2015 and 2022. Some sources predict that, if policies remain the same, child poverty rates will reach as high as 40%. In a recent report, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Professor Philip Alston, expressed his dismay that one fifth of the UK population—14 million people—were living in poverty, 1.5 million of whom are destitute and unable to afford basic essentials. His report described the immense growth in food banks and the queues outside them, people sleeping rough on the streets, and the growth of homelessness. It is utterly unacceptable that in 2019 millions of people live without food security.

By continuing the roll-out of universal credit, the Government are making it clear that the human cost of austerity is not a priority for them. In recent days, DWP Ministers have been talking of extra funding for universal credit—£1.5 billion to help people by allowing advances of up to 100% on day one, if individuals require it. Let us be clear: that is not extra money in the pocket of those barely getting by; it is debt, pure and simple. The gap between legacy and universal credit payments means that claimants who take up advances start their claims in debt to the DWP. Advances only complicate the process and should not be necessary in the first place.

To make matters worse, the Citizens Advice reported that claimants on universal credit were more likely to have debt problems than those on the legacy system. However, DWP Ministers seem to think that saddling claimants with debt from the start of their claim is a solution to the problem of poor design. The Government pledged an extra £4.5 billion for universal credit across the next five years in the last Budget. However, the benefits freeze is set to continue until April 2020, and there is no guarantee that it will not continue after that, no matter what soundbites emerge from the Secretary of State. The IFS has also made it clear that there are welfare cuts still to come of more than £4 billion per year until 2022-23, which spells more and more insecurity for those who can least withstand it. The Government continue to flatter themselves about ending austerity, but unless they restore humanity into the welfare system, I can only determine that it is a soundbite exercise.

In Edmonton, we are seeing the continued grinding down of local support services and the continuing impoverishment of the constituents who I was sent here as a Member of Parliament to represent and serve. Serving their interests and seeking to aid them is my primary goal, but the scale of issues with accessing universal credit means that Members’ offices are overwhelmed with pleas for help. I have seen an increase in the volume of cases, a large proportion of which are complex and need legal and specialist representation that is harder and harder to find. As a consequence of the DWP’s policies and approach, and in the context of austerity, I—like other MPs—am approaching the point when it will be untenable to make adequate representations on behalf of my constituents.

A key obstacle that my constituents face in accessing universal credit is the overemphasis that the system places on digitisation. According to Neil Couling of the DWP, the system relies heavily on digitisation to process claims and, as a result, less than 1% of claimants lose out. I find that hard to believe, because the reality of digital skills in the UK paints a very different picture. According to the Office for National Statistics, one UK adult in 10 has never used the internet, one in five lacks basic digital skills and 20% of disabled adults have never used the internet. Even a DWP survey reported that 30% of UC recipients found the online process either “very difficult” or “fairly difficult”, while 43% said that they needed more support with setting up their claim. Ipsos MORI’s 2018 UK consumer digital index agreed with DWP findings that an estimated 1.2 million benefit claimants have low digital capability or no digital capability. At times, my staff have had to set up email accounts and give basic IT training to my constituents.

In short, the design of universal credit is fundamentally flawed. It systematically disadvantages or excludes the millions of people in the UK without good digital skills. The over-reliance on digitisation has meant more and more people coming to my office because of issues that they face with universal credit or that originate in problems with universal credit. Given that 30% of universal credit recipients found the online process either “very difficult” or “fairly difficult”, and 43% said that they needed more support with setting up their claim, will the Minister accept that it is time to stop and rethink the over-reliance on the digital process?

Without a doubt, the benefits process is complex for anyone. Consequently, the DWP has helplines available under the legacy system to enable claimants and advice staff to uncover problems and find a solution. However, no such comparable arrangement is in place for universal credit. A working single mother in my constituency faced considerable issues when dealing with universal credit. A mother of three dependent children, she was wrongly advised by her work coach to end her claim for tax credit and claim universal credit instead. Unfortunately, the work coach had not grasped that universal credit was not available to claimants in Enfield with three or more children until 2019. As a result, my constituent’s claim was terminated. Although she had taken steps to apply separately for tax credit, her claim could not be processed because she was deemed to fall within the reclaim period for universal credit. Having just started a new job, she was reliant on benefit income to tide her and her children over until her wage arrived, but she was left with nothing.

She tried to deal directly with the DWP but had no success. She came to my office, but my caseworkers, too, were frustrated in their efforts to solve the problem. DWP staff incorrectly informed us that all third-party enquiries, including representations from MPs, would need to be made via an online portal, which could take more than a month to process, irrespective of the urgency of the representations. It was only after my office escalated the matter to the Secretary of State and to senior personnel on multiple occasions that matters were eventually resolved.

Universal credit left my constituent and her children in poverty. That could have been avoided if there had been key escalation points in place that she or my office could have used throughout the process. When problems emerge, the structures to remedy them are not fit for purpose. For what has proved to be a difficult system, why not introduce an escalation process such as a well-staffed helpline for claimants, Members’ offices and the wider sector? Will the Minister commit to making such changes to the system?

At the moment, the soundbite of the DWP’s approach is to “learn and adapt.” That is the height of privileged detachment. Can the Department really be serious? What are spoken of as problems to be solved as they come up are real people’s lives. What is perceived as a learning opportunity for Ministers is devastation for my constituents. I ask the Minister not to turn a blind eye to these problems, but to look back at universal credit’s three main objectives: to reduce poverty, to make work pay and to simplify benefits. Rather than ploughing ahead, is it not time for the Department to overhaul the system?

Universal credit in its current form simply is not working; it is causing greater poverty, destitution and anxiety wherever it is rolled out. The Government need to commit to a root-and-branch review of universal credit. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.