Department for Work and Pensions: Members’ Representations

Janet Daby Excerpts

Wednesday 16th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered representations by Members of Parliament to the Department for Work and Pensions on behalf of constituents.

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I am grateful to have been allocated this debate. I wish to raise the serious and worsening effects that the practices and policies of the Department for Work and Pensions are having on those needing welfare support, and the ability of the advice sector and staff, including those in my office, to support claimants. I could raise numerous points, but I will focus on universal credit. I must praise the work of MPs, third-sector groups and the Work and Pensions Committee in exposing the unfolding catastrophe of universal credit, and repeatedly forcing the Government to rethink their approach. Universal credit’s three main objectives are to reduce poverty, to make work pay and to simplify benefits.

Why do I need to raise the serious and worsening effects of DWP practices and policies? Let us be clear: the challenges that our constituents face are immense. Since being elected, I have witnessed at first hand a Government Department that has been increasingly uncompromising and punishing of claimants. That has been ever so evident in the woeful implementation of universal credit and its callous roll-out.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this significant debate. Does she agree that the five-week delay in universal credit is supporting people to get into debt rather than out of it, and that the Government should rethink how that is affecting the lives of real people?

[Kate Osamor]

My hon. Friend makes a valuable point, which I will come to later. I thank her for her contribution.

There is considerable anxiety among the 16,630 house- holds in Edmonton accessing at least one kind of social support that will be replaced by universal credit. By August 2018, around 2,750 households in Edmonton had been moved to the new system. Many of my constituents have reported multiple significant problems in dealing with universal credit, from understanding the new system, to the transition to universal credit, the excruciating application process, receiving payments, which are mainly late, and the ongoing support—in short, the entire system.

My constituents are not alone in their assessment of universal credit. The National Audit Office said that the universal credit programme was

“driven by an ambitious timescale”

and had

“suffered from weak management, ineffective control and poor governance.”

According to the Child Poverty Action Group, difficulties with claiming universal credit mean that currently one in five applications fails.

A vulnerable constituent of mine made a claim for universal credit in July 2018. It was initially incorrectly refused, even though he had provided all the necessary documentation. Only after challenging the decision was his application accepted in September 2018. Despite the appeal being upheld, he did not receive any universal credit payments until December 2018—almost five months after his initial claim. Let that sink in: it was five months after the initial claim, and he was an extremely vulnerable person.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Tomlinson]

As the hon. Lady said, that is to do with change of circumstances. The transitional arrangements were put in place for those who were transferring as part of natural migration, and we have, rightly, confirmed that that number will be ring-fenced to just 10,000 this year, so we can have a real deep dive to look at the levels of support that are needed. I will come back to that in a moment.

On the wider point about why transitional arrangements were not put in, that is because it was recognised that there would be a change of circumstances. We are seeing that a lot of people benefit, and some go the other way, but overall we are now spending an additional £2 billion on the current benefits compared with the legacy benefits, before the extra money goes in. That is more money going to the people who need that help.

Let me turn to points where I think there is agreement. We talk about office casework. We all have busy offices and have to prioritise casework and supporting our constituencies. I am very proud to have been rated third out of 650 on theyworkforyou.com on helping constituents. I absolutely understand the importance of casework. One of my staff specialises in this area, has visited the jobcentre with me and talked to the partnership manager. We all have a partnership manager, who is the point of contact for escalating cases.

I know the hon. Member for Edmonton was due to visit the jobcentre in December 2017, and that that visit was cancelled. I encourage her and her staff to take part in such a visit. It is really important, and they are there to help. Where we have specific cases that do not seem right, there is an ability to escalate; MPs can talk to the senior people in the respective jobcentres and they can help take that forward.

I have a lot of sympathy with the point about digital by default. The principle was to mirror the world of work, because most workplaces now expect staff to have a reasonable level of digital engagement. However, that is not the case for all people. Not all people on universal credit will end up in work—even if that is their ultimate aim, not everybody is going to, and not everybody will do that overnight. We need to improve communication in order to advise about alternatives; claimants can access support via the telephone, face to face, or through home visits. We need to do better at promoting that and it is certainly something that I will continue to push on.

We also need to look at the issue of consent. One of the complications of the General Data Protection Regulation is that we now need implicit consent. I regularly meet stakeholders, particularly housing associations and local authorities, who say, “We represent many of your vulnerable claimants, and we want to help. We have the resource to help, and we have teams, but unless we know that one of the people that we are working with is about to be migrated or has come on to universal credit or is accessing an advance payment, how can we help?” We have got to find a way, and I think that should be done in the same way as with advance payments—through making asking for implicit consent an automatic part of the initial interview, in order to get those support organisations working with claimants. There is a resource there that wants to support claimants and we should be doing everything we can to match them up.

We made a significant announcement on putting citizens’ advice into every single jobcentre throughout the country. It will be an independent organisation, and we will cover the costs. That will start in April, and I welcome it. As part of the test-and-learn with the 10,000, I want to look closely at exactly how much time is available to vulnerable claimants. Is it enough or are there other things that could be done? I think we should look very carefully at that.

[Janet Daby]

Advance payments still take five days. Does the Minister agree that that is just too long? What are people expected to do during that period?

[Justin Tomlinson]

Actually, if somebody is in particular hardship, they can get access to money within a couple of hours, so that is an option. I am not sure how well that has been communicated, but that rule is in place for those who genuinely need it.

We should continue to work with stakeholders. I am very receptive to meeting stakeholders. Throughout the week I meet different groups that will often come and challenge the Government, and hold our feet to the coals. It is right for them to do that, because they are identifying issues. There are a number of cases where a stakeholder with particular expertise has then helped to rewrite and deliver our training. For example, on the very important issue of domestic abuse, I have been working very closely with Women’s Aid, Refuge and Mankind. They went over all the training documents and sat through a typical claimant’s experience to identify whether things are in place. We are looking to bring further improvements based on their expertise.