Universal Credit and Working Tax Credits

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I rise to speak against the cut to universal credit, which is cruel, illogical and unnecessary. It is cruel because £20 a week makes all the difference to those on the lowest incomes, many of whom are already working all the hours they can but simply cannot make ends meet. Norwood and Brixton food bank, which serves many of my constituents every week with love and care, has been warning for many months that if local people on universal credit are subjected to this cut, the need for emergency food support will increase, placing even more pressure on its staff and volunteers. Our welfare state was established to provide a security safety net for people who cannot make ends meet, yet this Government are taking us back to Victorian Britain, where people forced into appalling hardship by the Government’s failures are reliant on the good will of our communities in ever-increasing numbers.

This cut will cause unspeakable hardship. Parents will go without food so that their children can eat. People will suffer in cold, damp homes because they will not be able to afford the heating. Debt will increase and physical and mental health will deteriorate. This cut is illogical, because at a time of fragile economic recovery, when high streets up and down the country are struggling and shops are closing, it makes no sense to be taking millions of pounds of expenditure out of every single constituency in the country. And this cut is unnecessary, because it is a political choice.

There are many ways in which the Government could lift people out of poverty. They could raise the minimum wage to the real living wage, make housing more affordable, make childcare more affordable and ban zero-hours contracts, but they have failed those on the lowest pay for more than a decade and now they are punishing the same low-paid workers. These are the same people who have been at the frontline of the coronavirus pandemic: social care workers, shop workers, childcare workers, delivery drivers, hospital porters, bus drivers and others. This is no way to treat those who have seen us through the greatest crisis since the second world war.

It does not take a degree in engineering to know that if the screws are too tight, the pressure will buckle and break even the strongest of materials. Make no mistake, this cut will break people who have already faced so much pressure from the cruel policies of this Tory Government bearing down on them. Government Members have a choice: they can live with this cruellest of cuts or they can join us in the Lobby and vote against it, because it is wrong and unacceptable.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

After the next speaker, I will reduce the time limit to two minutes, but that is because I want to get everybody in. I call Zarah Sultana.