Universal Credit Roll-out

Judith Cummins Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

I am pleased to be called to speak in this very important debate.

I want to start with the quotes from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation mentioned by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith). He was very selective, as the foundation was much more cautious about the roll-out of universal credit. Without reform and redesign, universal credit will hurt the very people it is supposed to help: working people, families and communities right across this country.

I am proud that, as a Labour Member of Parliament, I stood in this year’s general election on a manifesto pledge to reform universal credit and end the injustice of claimants having to wait six weeks for their payments. During those six weeks, life does not stop. Rents still need paying, food still needs to be put on the table and the heating bills still need to be paid. I am interested in making sure that working people up and down the country can enjoy dignity, fairness and stability in their lives. Without reform, universal credit promises quite the opposite: it creates instability, uncertainty and injustice.

Working people cannot survive another blow to their finances. Seven years of this Conservative Government has left working people struggling to make ends meet, and universal credit risks pushing many over the edge. This headlong rush to roll out universal credit will have dreadful consequences for this country’s children and young people. They will suffer the most. That is what the Government must remember: standing behind their ministerial statements and spreadsheets are real people, real families and millions of vulnerable children.

As the House knows, the scale of child poverty in this country, which is one of the richest in the world, is appalling. One in four children grow up in poverty today: that is 28%, or nine children in every classroom of 30. In my own constituency, over 9,000 children live in poverty—a shocking 34% of all our children. The Child Poverty Action Group has stood against the rising tide of child poverty. Its analysis reveals how working families will suffer: all families with children will be worse off by an average of £960 a year by 2020, and all single-parent families will be left worse off by, on average, £2,380. The Government should be ashamed of these figures. They have created a system that punishes the very people our welfare system was designed to protect. If the Minister is not yet convinced that a change is necessary, I ask that he reflect on the words of a former Prime Minister who described universal credit as

“operationally messy, socially unfair and unforgiving”.

As he will know, those are the words of former Prime Minister John Major. I ask that the Minister listen and pause the roll-out for the sake of working families and children of this great nation.