Universal Credit: North-West

Debate between Jonathan Reynolds and Nigel Evans

Wednesday 13th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to see a fellow north-west MP in the Chair for this important debate, Mr Nuttall. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Marie Rimmer) on securing the debate, and indeed on the impressive work she has done since being elected to Parliament. St Helens is a place with similar issues to my borough, Tameside, so it is excellent that she is raising them.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) is also present. She, too, represents Tameside, which was a universal credit pathfinder area, so we were one of the first parts of the country to experience some of the problems related to it. No matter what political perspective a person has going into the debate on welfare rights and the welfare system, it is important to listen to relevant experience, where it exists, of how universal credit has functioned so far. I should say at the outset that I completely support the goal of simplifying our welfare system—I do not think anyone in this country would not want that.

Like many Members, I use the Child Poverty Action Group handbook to help constituents when they come to me with problems. The handbook is sometimes referred to as the bible of welfare rights; indeed, it is the same size and written in a similar font as the Bible. That indicates the complexity of the system, so of course people should be trying to simplify it. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) said, we cannot get away from the reality that many people lead complex lives and have complex needs. The system must function in a way that gives them the support they need.

A number of the issues that come up at my constituency surgery that I wanted to raise have already been mentioned, but they are so important that I want to reiterate why they are key to making the system work properly. The first one is the first payment that people get. In my experience, there are immediate problems for people when they try to access universal credit because of how the system is designed. It is not a teething problem with the roll-out, but a structural flaw in how universal credit has been created. A lot of people are immediately put into a position where they struggle to afford food and heating. That simply does not seem to tally with the goal of supporting people into and out of the workplace. Instead of giving them a professional and efficient service when they need it, it often robs them of their dignity and puts them into crisis.

Like other Members present, at times of my life I have had to access support from the welfare system, particularly the tax credit system, which is almost always the case for those who have children at quite a young age. It did not lead me into a life of welfare dependency—it arguably led me to a worse life, as I ended up here in the House of Commons. Nevertheless, that is an important point, because so much of the Government’s rhetoric is based on the assumption that there are two sets of people in the country: an underclass of welfare recipients who must be punished and whipped back into the workplace, and everyone else who suffers from having to pay for the system. If that is the Government’s mindset going into the designing of a welfare benefit, the welfare system will simply never be designed in an appropriate fashion to meet the objectives of the people who have been described in this debate.

[Mr Nigel Evans]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has brought up the question of whether that is what the Government intend, because the answer is clearly no. The greatest dignity that we can give to anyone is the dignity of work and employment. That is the main thrust of what the Government want to see. Getting people off benefits and into full-time work will provide them with dignity and give their children a role model to follow.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I do not doubt the hon. Gentleman’s motivation. Before the debate we exchanged some comments about that sense of there being a group of taxpayers paying for the welfare system and a group of people in receipt of welfare benefits. That is not the way to design a welfare system. We cannot do it in a way that divides the country so simply into those arbitrary classifications. Indeed, if we do that, it is impossible to design an effective system.

I mentioned the issues relating to the first universal credit payment. People have to wait a long time, because it is designed to be paid five to six weeks in arrears. As the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) said in an intervention, the assumption is that they are in the workplace and receiving a monthly salary in arrears, so they will have that support before receiving universal credit. I say this completely genuinely: that is not how the economy of my constituency works. A great many people are still paid weekly or fortnightly. A lot of people have different levels of income week by week because of zero-hours contracts. That does not seem to have been considered in the level of detail required to design how and when people will receive the support that they need.

Delays occur in any bureaucratic system, but there is an even bigger structural flaw in universal credit that I have heard about several times in my constituency surgeries. If someone applies for universal credit on the wrong day—perhaps one or two days before they really “should” apply; in other words, when they have lost their job but before they have received their final pay cheque from their former employer—the system becomes disastrous for them. We must bear in mind that a lot of people, on finding out that they are going to be made redundant, would go to the jobcentre to look at the available support. If they apply for universal credit but receive a further pay cheque from their employer, they will wait not five to six weeks but 10 to 11. That is an enormous problem that must be looked at. If that happens—if someone has to know exactly when to apply for the support to which they are entitled—it will go far beyond the current level of complexity. That would have to be sorted out before any national roll-out.

I have raised those points because we have to find a way to get a supportive system that copes with people going into and out of the workplace—regular or temporary work—in a way that does not completely reset the system and cause all kinds of problems if they then go back into work. That is what I mean when I say that we should not split the country with an arbitrary classification of those in work and those out of work and receiving welfare benefits.

Whenever problems with universal credit are raised, the Government say that advance payments can sort out all the problems, whether with housing arrears, heating or food. That is the first question I ask people who come to see me with problems with universal credit, and a lot of them tell me that they have not been told about the advance payments system. I do not know what the experience of other hon. Members is, but advance payments do not seem to be programmed into the initial assessment. If a person does not know about the advance payment system, they have an even bigger problem, because they cannot claim an advance payment if they are a number of days past their initial assessment. If people accessing unemployment benefits for the first time face a confusing system that does not give them the funding they are entitled to, given that they have paid into the system, and that prevents them from getting back into the workplace, that is not an improvement on the current system. There has been a lot of party political advertising of the employment rate, the Government’s successes, childcare and all that, but we need to look at these genuine, serious problems.

Despite the objective of simplifying the system, the roll-out would have been disastrous in my area if it were not for our welfare rights advisers. To my mind, the staff of Tameside citizens advice bureau are absolute heroes. The reality is that that kind of support is being stripped from all communities. Law centres and citizens advice bureaux are closing. If the system is to work, we have got to give people impartial, fair advice. The hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) made a fair comment about how people can get in touch with welfare advisers. That is important, and it is sad to see welfare advisers going at a time when people need them.

Universal credit is a big change, and if people do not have support to access it properly, their perception of it will be negative. We have to ensure that that is not the case. From my casework and experience, from what is happening in other parts of the country and from people’s testimonies, my overwhelming impression is that, despite the scale of the bureaucratic challenge of moving to universal credit, we are not tackling the big problems of our social security system. We are not providing sufficient support for people who have lost their job for the very first time—particularly during the global finance crisis—and who never thought they would be unemployed. When they find out what their national insurance contributions will buy, they are often frankly disgusted at the level of support available to them.

We are not tackling the sanctions, the conditionality and the job search criteria. Frankly, I think we are treating a lot of people like children and robbing them of their dignity. We are not giving them what they should reasonably expect when they access the welfare system. Most of all, the system is unable to cope with the flexible working patterns that are so common in our economy. Many people do not have jobs for life; often, they do not even have jobs that last for years. The system has to reflect that, but I do not think those things have been priced in. Despite the bureaucracy and our overall level of spending on the social security system, people in my constituency have been left genuinely destitute and reliant on charity and food banks to survive. That cannot be right. Given the resources we put into the system, there has to be a better way to do it.

I think we need an even more radical approach. We should look to other countries for best practice. Concepts such as basic income do not lead to a taper problem and do not disincentivise people from going back into the workplace; rather, people are supported in different stages of their lives and everybody gets something out of the system for what they pay into it. That is the direction in which we have got to be looking. We need something more radical than universal credit. Universal credit, if it worked properly, would be welcome, but at the moment there are huge teething and design problems. Even once those problems are sorted, it will not tackle the big problems of the welfare system. Let us sort those problems out, but let us not end the conversation about welfare reform here. Let us address the challenges and create a system that truly works for everybody.

Assisted Dying (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Jonathan Reynolds and Nigel Evans

Friday 11th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).

Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.

Question agreed to.

Question put accordingly, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

The House proceeded to a Division.

[Mr Nigel Evans]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Some Members will have sat throughout the debate today and will have decided that they will not register a vote as they cannot make up their minds. Will you confirm that outside of voting in both Lobbies, which is strongly discouraged, there is no way in which a Member of Parliament can register an abstention following a debate?