Universal Credit

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 19th April 2017 Westminster Hall

[Catherine McKinnell]

I take on board the hon. Gentleman’s serious concerns and, indeed, implore the Government to get this process right before they roll it out across the country.

There are also some fundamental flaws in the system. The fact that payments are made monthly and in arrears effectively embeds debt into the system—as landlords awaiting receipt of the housing benefit element of universal credit know all too well—and requires repeated applications for advance payments from DWP and/or budgeting skills, which many people sadly do not have. Indeed, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation recently commented:

“People risk debt, destitution and eviction while they wait…to receive their first UC payment”—

a description that surely belongs in the world of Charles Dickens, rather than in the modern, fit-for-purpose and efficient social welfare system that we should have in 21st-century Britain.

So what was the DWP’s initial response to the increasing number of complaints about universal credit claims? In a letter dated 20 January 2017 and addressed to

“Colleagues working in the welfare advice sector”,

MPs in full service universal credit areas were informed that they could not receive any information about a constituent’s case unless the constituent in question had provided online explicit consent directly to the DWP. The letter stated that such consent

“must be given freely, unambiguously and in an informed way. The claimant must be clear on the information that they want to be disclosed and who the information can be disclosed to…Consent does not last indefinitely, but covers a particular query or piece of business.”

Even when I had been sent an email by a constituent that provided me with all the details of their case and that specifically asked me to intervene on their behalf—usually because they had reached the end of their tether —that was not deemed sufficient proof for the DWP to provide me with information about the case. I am, of course, pleased that that ridiculous situation has now been reviewed, after complaints by many hon. Members and an intervention by the Leader of the House, but I must emphasise that it caused weeks of additional challenge for my constituents and for my caseworkers in Newcastle, who were deluged with universal credit cases but could not receive any sensible information about them.

The Minister need not take my word for the problems that people face in Newcastle. He can come and visit the Newcastle citizens advice bureau, for which the DWP’s explicit consent edict remains in place. He can hear about the 85 universal credit clients from Newcastle upon Tyne North alone that the bureau has supported in the last year, who have faced severely delayed payments and, in the bureau’s words,

“unnecessary hardship through no fault of their own”.

They face that hardship because of difficulties in finding or accessing a computer, failure of jobcentre staff to provide information about advance payments, incorrect information held on claimants’ records, incorrect advice being provided by jobcentre staff, and incorrect payments being made.

Alternatively, the Minister can come and meet staff from Your Homes Newcastle, the arm’s length management organisation responsible for managing Newcastle’s council housing stock, to discuss the significant level of support that they are having to provide to tenants through the universal credit process. Indeed, Your Homes Newcastle has highlighted that it and Newcastle City Council have so far provided support to 506 people,

“specifically to help those who may be unable to manage monthly payments or don’t understand UC and need explanations at the very start of their claims. The time taken to support customers in personal budgeting varies between 2 and 15 hours of support, although there are some exceptional cases where this can take considerably longer. The average time per case is currently 3.5 hours and this is carried out by staff co-located at Jobcentres. The cost of placing three staff in Newcastle Jobcentres to provide this service is £93,651 annually.”

That support is above and beyond the 25 minutes to two hours that it can take Your Homes Newcastle staff to assist tenants through the initial universal credit claim process. Some of the more complex cases can take significantly longer. Indeed, Your Homes Newcastle staff have highlighted the case of one tenant whose universal credit application has taken them approximately 100 hours to progress. Throughout that time, the woman has seen a significant decline in her health and wellbeing, as well as real financial hardship because of the severe delays and mistakes on the DWP’s part. If this represents a simplification and streamlining of the benefits system, I dread to think what a more complicated system would look like.

Of particular concern to Your Homes Newcastle is the significant impact on rent arrears of the roll-out of universal credit and the associated delays. I know that the Minister has repeatedly claimed—no doubt he will do so again this afternoon—that a large number of cases that enter universal credit have existing rent arrears. However, Your Homes Newcastle has made it clear to me that its current income collection rate is 93.9% of the rent due from tenants who are on universal credit, compared with 99.8% of the rent owed by other tenants. As a result, there was a reduced income collection of £220,000 for customers on universal credit at the end of the financial year. Your Homes Newcastle went on to state that tenants on universal credit owe a total of £784,000 in rent arrears, of which some £381,000—just under 50%—are solely as a result of universal credit. As Newcastle City Council has informed the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, of the 1,380 Your Homes Newcastle tenants claiming universal credit on 10 March, some 1,186—more than 85%—were in rent arrears. The average level of those rent arrears was £686, more than double the average of £300 for YHN tenants in rent arrears. Clearly the situation is completely unsustainable.

Housing-related concerns about universal credit are shared by the homelessness charity Crisis, which clearly states that, as it currently operates, universal credit

“is causing rent arrears, threats of eviction and homelessness for our clients”.

Meanwhile, the Residential Landlords Association has raised concerns that

“as it currently operates, Universal Credit is causing rent arrears problems for a considerable number of tenants. Changes are needed to provide tenants and landlords with greater confidence that rent can be paid on time and in full.”

All three organisations—Your Homes Newcastle, Crisis and the RLA—are pressing the Government to make alternative payment arrangements much easier to set up.

It is clear to me and to many other hon. Members that the roll-out of universal credit is having a significant detrimental impact on far too many of our constituents. These issues are not unique to Newcastle; they are being replicated across the country, as other parliamentary debates—including one recently secured by the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry)—have made all too clear. Indeed, some of the concerns that I have highlighted this afternoon recently caused the Work and Pensions Committee to reopen its inquiry into the impact of universal credit. The Chair of the Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), commented:

“Despite a growing body of evidence about the very real hardship the rollout of Universal Credit is creating for some, often the most vulnerable, claimants—and the struggles it is creating for local authorities trying to fulfil their responsibilities—it is flabbergasting that the Government continues to keep its head in the sand.”

I agree.

On behalf of my constituents, of people in other areas in which universal credit has been fully rolled out, and of people in the rest of the country who will still have to endure this process, I strongly urge the Minister to take his head out of the sand and start addressing the very real issues that the roll-out of universal credit—the Government’s flagship policy—is causing. We must ask ourselves: how many times, from how many people and organisations across how many parts of the country must the Minister hear that universal credit is not working before he finally accepts that it is time to act?

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

I will call the Front Benchers at 3.42 pm, half an hour before the end of the debate at 4.12 pm. I ask hon. Members to speak for between five and six minutes, so that everyone gets an equal share.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) on securing this important debate, as the daily lives of our constituents are being adversely affected by the operation of the universal credit system. I want to highlight for the Minister a couple of examples of West Lancashire constituents who are in receipt of universal credit and what their experience is. The system is far from improving work incentives and tackling poverty among low-incomes families and far from developing a particularly effective new administrative system. Families are not paying only the financial cost of the system failures; there is an emotional cost as well.

As for improving work incentives, a young person in West Lancashire was offered four days’ work. In accepting, he had to get the jobcentre adviser to sign a form confirming that he was in receipt of universal credit. If the forms were not completed by the deadline set by the employer, the job offer was to be withdrawn. Two days before the deadline, he was told that the form would need to be sent to the DWP’s Wolverhampton office to be signed, which was ridiculous. Only through my intervention and the good sense of a senior jobcentre official was the matter resolved in the end.

It strikes me that there is an organisational culture in the DWP in which process trumps outcomes. I have dealt with the case of a single parent with one child going out to work. Their problem was caused by the unintelligent and inflexible assessment system that universal credit operates. Those of us who are paid monthly know there are occasions when our payday is earlier owing to the standard payday falling on a weekend or a bank holiday. In some instances, universal credit assesses a person as having two sets of income in the one month and therefore they do not get any payment. In the case of my constituent, they lost out on £350 for their childcare costs. The following month, the payday was also brought forward.

I suspect that the Minister will say that, in the round, the payments will equalise out, but that fundamentally ignores how household budgets operate and the family’s need for the payments they receive to be consistent and regular. For families whose day-to-day existence is financially balanced, that leads to them asking whether they are really better off in work, if that is the result. A change in one month’s payment can have a ripple effect that lasts considerably longer than one month for a family’s financial position to recover.

Another West Lancashire family, a working couple in receipt of universal credit, experienced problems receiving payments in four consecutive months, which included their claim being incorrectly closed after the information that the claimant provided was not entered in the system. Having not received their payment, they called the Department to seek an explanation and asked for a call back. Owing to the request being processed incorrectly, there was no call back. In months three and four, payments were again not paid. What did the DWP do? It sent a letter apologising for the repeated failures, which it said were due to an “oversight” on the part of the Department for Work and Pensions. Well, that’s okay, then—I think not. Anybody with an ounce of compassion for the people they deal with would not even put such words on a piece of paper.

For their trouble, the family received a £25 consolatory payment, although the DWP could not say when that would be paid because it takes weeks to process. I am sure that, for the Minister and the people operating the universal credit system, such failures seem to be minor administrative mistakes. I raise them in the desperate, perhaps forlorn, hope that the Minister will begin to understand that such mistakes have monumental and disproportionate consequences for the people on the receiving end. It is not only about the financial costs; there is a lasting emotional cost.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply, but I remind him that he will be judged by his actions in making the system better for families, rather than contributing to their daily struggles. He has that responsibility.

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

I have been advised that, as names have rolled over from the previous time, unfortunately I have to restrict the time limit to four minutes. I apologise for that, but there are many people with an interest in such an important subject.

--- Later in debate ---

On resuming—

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

The debate will go on until 4.22 pm. I call Dr Whiteford.

[Dr Whiteford]

Usually people have exhausted their savings or redundancy money before they claim benefits, but if someone starts a new job, it is normal to be paid at the end of the week or month in which they start. The Government have said consistently that they want universal credit to mimic the world of work, but in that respect it really does not, and they need to look urgently at waiting times.

We all understand that processing a claim will take some days, but the monthly payment and discounted first seven days slows down the process unnecessarily and leaves people in considerable hardship. In reality, many claimants are having to wait a lot longer than six weeks. Eight to 12 weeks is more typical in some full service areas, and often longer. That is just not okay, and we have heard today about how those problems are not just abstract. I know from previous discussions on the subject that people have lost their homes. Many people on universal credit will be in work already so may have some other source of income, but a significant minority of new claimants will be sick and disabled people, assessed as unfit for work, and people who have just lost a job. The advance payments available are simply inadequate and are driving people into food banks, into debt and into trouble with their landlords. The bottom line is that the system is failing. It is in chaos.

Rent arrears are possibly the most far-reaching adverse impact of the full service roll-out. The Highland Council alone has seen rent arrears soar by £1 million, which is entirely and solely attributable to the roll-out of universal credit. My concern is that that is just the tip of the iceberg. We can get accurate figures of the scale and extent of the problem from local authorities, but the impact on other social landlords is likely to be profound. I know that housing associations in Scotland have warned that increases in arrears damage their financial stability, hitting their ability to invest in existing properties and build new ones. Private sector tenants and landlords face significant problems too, given that landlords may be servicing mortgages and may not have the level of solvency needed to wait several months for unpaid rent. We are already witnessing evictions. Just as worrying, we are already seeing evidence that some landlords are simply refusing to consider universal credit tenants.

Evictions and homelessness cause untold upheaval and misery for all involved and have a huge impact on other public services. The homelessness charity Crisis reports that 89% of English local authorities fear that the roll-out of universal credit will exacerbate homelessness. That situation is avoidable. We do not need to go down that road. The Government need to get a grip.

The Government have offered the excuse that the sharp increase we have seen in arrears appears to fall over time, several months down the line, but, frankly, that obfuscates the scale and extent of the increase in arrears. It also obscures the debt and hardship that those tenants, on desperately low incomes, are enduring in order to pay off a level of arrears that they would never have incurred under the previous system. It is yet another way in which the universal credit system fails to mimic the world of work, where most landlords require rent to be paid upfront a month in advance and, certainly in the private sector, expect sizeable deposits. Once again, the systemic pressures of the new system are being borne by people on marginal incomes—those with the fewest assets and means, working in the lowest paid jobs, recently unemployed or unable to work because of ill health or disability.

The other major breakdown in the system is in relation to the online accounts and problems with call handling on the telephone helpline. In many parts of rural Scotland, digital connectivity is well behind that in urban areas, notwithstanding significant recent progress. In my own constituency, 25% of people do not have access to the internet. It also remains substantially more expensive than in urban areas, and because of that, there are significant numbers of people with limited digital skills and experience who rely heavily on public access terminals.

My hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) highlighted the high costs and time involved in travelling from rural areas to a diminishing number of jobcentres. I do not think a 200-mile round trip is acceptable. To put that trip in perspective, it would be like asking somebody here in central London to travel to Nottingham or Stoke-on-Trent for a DWP appointment. I do not think that is realistic.

My hon. Friend also highlighted a litany of problems with the telephone helpline. If someone calling from a mobile phone has to wait half an hour on the line, they could spend as much as a third of their weekly income on food, heating and essentials. Twenty quid may not sound like a king’s ransom to higher rate taxpayers, but for someone on a very low income, it is an enormous amount of money. Even if the Government’s assertion that waiting times are only eight or nine minutes was backed up by the documented experience from MPs’ offices and citizens advice bureaux, that is still a fiver. Proportionately, that is a lot of money for someone in receipt of £73 a week who is struggling to pay rent, heat their home and buy food.

Universal credit should have been quite easy to roll out in the highlands, in that there is a relatively buoyant labour market and universal credit should, in theory, be better suited to managing patterns of seasonal employment, which is widespread in the region. But it is proving to be a disaster, not just there but, as we have heard today, across the UK.

My last point is this: leaving aside the catalogue of incompetence that has dogged universal credit from the start, the new benefit is turning the screws on low-income working families and is now unrecognisable from its original design. According to the Child Poverty Action Group, by 2020 families with children will be, on average, £960 pounds a year worse off than they would have been under the previous system. The effects are magnified for families where one parent is working full time and the other is working part time or is at home with the bairns. Parents of severely disabled children are losing out. Those who will be most disadvantaged are single parents working full time in low paid jobs, who will be, on average, £2,380 pounds worse off. That is almost £200 a month.

The idea that work always pays under universal credit is just nonsense. It is a massive cut in household income and it punishes people who are already working full time, doing everything they can to make ends meet. For some of those people, work will no longer pay, and they would be better off if they cut their hours. That is exactly the opposite of what universal credit was designed to do. The policy has been so filleted by successive austerity cuts that it is no longer able to deliver the improvements it promised. Instead, it is set to drive up child poverty.

As we have heard today, the full service roll-out of universal credit is proving to be a disaster. It is causing chaos for landlords, housing associations and local authorities. It is causing turmoil, upheaval and real hardship in the lives of claimants who are entitled to support. We have had no adequate assurances from the Government that the systemic failures are being addressed. In those circumstances, I believe that we need to call a halt to the universal credit roll-out and go back to the drawing board, because at the moment it is an unmitigated mess and ordinary people are paying the price.