Universal Credit Roll-out

Debate between Heidi Allen and Nigel Huddleston

Thursday 16th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Heidi Allen (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to speak in this important debate. My congratulations to the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid): may I have some dolphins for South Cambridgeshire, please? I am not sure where we would put them, but we would take great care of them. I also sincerely thank the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) for securing this debate via the Backbench Business Committee and for working so closely in cross-party partnership with me on an issue that is very important to us both.

Members, including Ministers, will know that I fully support universal credit and believe that, when it is fully implemented, it will be the most positive transformation of our benefit system in decades. As an employer, I remember only too well the weaknesses of the old system—the 16-hour cliff-edge that limited employees’ ability to take on more hours, knowing they would be worse off. I was reminded of that in a conversation last week with a constituent. The full service universal credit system has not yet come to my local jobcentre in Cambridge. She does not want to take any more hours now because of that. What kind of a benefit trap is that? Surely, no one in the House can support a benefit system that actively discourages progression in work.

Universal credit will be different, and where the live service—the basic system for single, uncomplicated jobseekers—has been rolled out, it is different. We see more people moving into and upwards in work. However, it is without doubt the full service—that is, the full universal credit system which will support families, parents and those with caring responsibilities, health conditions and disabilities—that causes many of us concern.

I appreciate that such a huge transformation in operation will come with challenges and that the “test and learn” approach is commonplace in IT projects; but the crucial difference is that the subject of this project is someone’s life. This is about people; it is about real lives. Get it right and the potential is huge, but get it wrong and the risks are simply too great. They may manifest themselves —I will say it—in debt and in hunger. So it is right that Ministers have opted to roll universal credit out slowly, steadily, carefully, because there have been unacceptable delays in claimants’ first payments. The long-awaited landlord portal should have come sooner. I wish that we had had a freephone number for everyone from the beginning. There remain parts of the system that are incomplete—the minimum income floor for the self-employed and the evidence-gathering process for childcare costs need further development.

If I am honest, I believe the system will never reach its truly intended potential as the ultimate poverty-fighting machine until either the taper rate is reduced or work allowances are restored to their original pre-2015 levels.

I thank the Chancellor for reducing the taper rate by 2% in the last Budget. It cost a lot of money—£1 billion—but every penny really does matter to those living on the lowest incomes. Single parents and second parents returning to work will be worse off now than they would have been under the old system. An in-work couple will lose about £1,370 a year due to the benefits freeze and work allowance cuts. Are they not the very people we should be encouraging to get into work?

Tight fiscal discipline, razor-sharp focusing of precious resources, precise and meaningful interventions, smart thinking—that is what this Government do well. We could find the money by reversing the decision to raise the basic income tax allowance from £11,000 to £12,500 for all; but would it not be better to focus that money on those who really need it? I do not need it. I suspect Opposition Members do not need it. Not everyone needs it.

If we want universal credit to be exactly like the world of work, it has to operate like the world of work. Can any Minister or civil servant honestly say that waiting six weeks for your first payment is normal? So, from my universal credit wish list, one ask stands head and shoulders above the rest: we must get the six-week wait down.

I remain grateful to the Prime Minister for agreeing to meet me so soon after my question in the Chamber, and I appreciate the diligence and receptiveness of the Secretary of State, the Chancellor and the Minister in hearing our concerns. Members on both sides of the House, our cross-party Work and Pensions Committee, peers, charities, the Children’s Commissioner and, most important of all, our constituents have raised concerns. We cannot all be wrong. The six-week wait must be reduced to a month. When we stopped the cuts to tax credits in 2015, halted further cuts to PIP in 2016 and put £1 billion back into the taper rate last year, they were the right things to do. They demonstrated the good that Government can do.

[Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

As well as making recommendations about what the Government can do, recommendations that are, I think, sincerely meant and will, I am sure, be taken on board by the Minister, does my hon. Friend agree—this has been mentioned by others in the House today—that other parties, including immoral big letting agencies, also need to act in this sphere?

[Heidi Allen]

Absolutely. System changes of this magnitude require everybody to work properly, with integrity, and not exert any kind of influence on the most vulnerable people in the country, who perhaps cannot defend themselves and are not legally trained. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right on that.