Universal Credit and Welfare Reform

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Joan Ruddock

Tuesday 11th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Absolutely right. That is exactly what we are trying to do, and I will ensure that it is one of the areas we look at. That is the whole process we are engaged in. If we can get more people in social housing online, the net benefit will be phenomenal. We are all desperate for more broadband, but the people who will benefit the most—for shopping and so on—will be older people and others in difficulty on lower incomes. They will benefit massively, if we can begin to get them online. This is a crusade as much as anything else.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I am extremely grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. He said earlier that he would not publish the business case, despite the request. I wonder, however, whether he can tell us something that we assume might be in the business case. How many more hours working in the economy does he expect to see as a consequence of introducing universal benefit next year?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

If the right hon. Lady will forgive me, I am not going to give her specific details now, although I am happy to talk to her at greater length later on. The point I would simply make is that universal credit is designed to get more people who are below work, as it were, to cross the line into work. When people ask, “What is universal credit really about?”, they always talk about the taper. That is really important: simplifying the taper allows people to move up the hours. In truth, however, universal credit’s key component is the disregards—the bit we call the participation tax rate. In other words, right now, unless someone goes straight to 16 hours as a lone parent, for example, the participation tax rate—the moment when they join work—is so high that there are households that need two earners in work just to have enough money to survive. The idea of universal credit is to break that down and improve their lot. I cannot give the right hon. Lady the detail, but I believe that more people will move up the hours, with more people moving into higher hours and longer-term work.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Joan Ruddock

Monday 14th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The first thing I can say to my hon. Friend is that one of the key coalition drives is to stop the would-be jobs tax, the national insurance charge, that was to be imposed by the last Government when they were in power because that would have taken away a great many opportunities for young people. The other thing is to make sure that the targeted Work programme, which the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), will be speaking about in more detail later, helps the youth unemployed get back to work. We must remember that after all the money that was spent by the other Government, youth unemployment is now higher than it was when they came into office in 1997.

[Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

Last week, the new Government announced that the jobcentre in Deptford, serving 2,500 of my constituents, is to be closed. Will the right hon. Gentleman meet me urgently to discuss how he plans to help the unemployed in my area, or is this to be the first example of how the coalition seeks to protect the poorest and most vulnerable from its savage cuts?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am very happy to meet the right hon. Lady at a moment of her convenience. I understand that the centre had reached the end of its lease, and we are trying to find a way of ensuring that there is support in the area. I am happy to meet her and deal with those specifics.