The Secretary of State’s Handling of Universal Credit

Debate between Grahame Morris and Simon Hoare

Wednesday 11th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), who speaks with great experience on these matters. One of the burning questions this afternoon is whether the Labour party’s official position is to continue to support the principle of universal credit. Every time that Labour has the opportunity to endorse universal credit, it dodges doing that and seeks to tear it down from within.

The hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), who speaks from the Opposition Front Bench, may be interested to hear the observation of one of the senior managers in my local jobcentre in Blandford Forum, which I visited a few weeks ago. He told me that he had been advocating and urging something like universal credit since he joined the service way back in 1986. This simplified approach, making it easier for people, is absolutely the right way. Likewise, the approach of roll-out, pause, reflect and revise that the Government and the Department have adopted is absolutely the right one. That is in sharp contradistinction to the dramatic roll-out, to trumpets and drums, of the tax credit system, and look at the absolute disaster that that was. The Department’s approach is the right one.

The shadow Minister, of course, has form on these matters. In a debate on the national health service in January this year, she told us:

“Let us have no more talk about taking the politics out of the NHS. The NHS is a political entity.”—[Official Report, 10 January 2018; Vol. 634, c. 373.]

I chastised her on that. She likes to come forward with crocodile tears, synthetic concern and outrage. Labour Front Benchers merely use this to prey on the concerns of very vulnerable people for what they believe to be cheap political advantage.

The hon. Lady may be interested to hear an email from a constituent of mine—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) wants to intervene, he is very welcome to.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I’m not going to give you more time.

[Simon Hoare]

Thank you for that. Let me quote from a constituent of mine:

“I went in great fear of UC. I thought it would be too difficult and cruel. I thought things would be made hard for me and my family. But I applied. It was easy and far simpler than I thought.”

He said that the only mistake he made was that he had listened to Labour and that it was Labour that had made him afraid of the process. That is the legacy of the approach.

In closing, I invite my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to consider—the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) and I have discussed this—the role and effectively the right of audience that those who work for the CAB have in this process. There seems to be some confusion. I suggest to my right hon. Friend that she convene, at a moment of her convenience, some form of roundtable to establish some form of protocol for those in the CAB who do valiant work for our constituents.