Universal Credit Roll-out
Debate between Karen Buck and Mark Harper(7 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Harper
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention.
Let me run through, very briefly, one or two of the points made by the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth. She is fond of saying that she completely supports the principle of universal credit and wants it to be implemented, but she then goes on to list innumerable reasons for her fundamental disagreement with all the key strands of the benefit. She cannot have it both ways. If she does not want universal credit to be implemented, let her just stand up and say so. She should not pretend that she agrees with the fundamental principles, and then say that she disagrees with almost every important aspect of it.
I listened to and read very carefully what the hon. Lady said during last week’s debate. I shall pick just a couple of reasons for the fact that I could not support that motion. The hon. Lady referred specifically to housing. The Minister set out the position very clearly today, as the Secretary of State did last week. If there are universal credit recipients who have issues with managing their rent, they can arrange for their landlords to be paid directly, but I do not think we should patronisingly assume that every single person receiving universal credit is incapable of managing the rent. Most of them are perfectly capable of managing their finances, and we should treat them accordingly.
Mr Harper
What I was going to come to was why I do not think it is right to pause the roll-out. One of the important aspects of the roll-out is the housing portal which will enable social housing landlords in the first instance to communicate with the Department to deal with tenants when there are rent issues. If we were to pause the roll-out, the Department would not have an opportunity to deal with the real issues that are raised, and to fix them.
Universal Credit Roll-out
Debate between Karen Buck and Mark Harper(7 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Harper
I was grateful for my hon. Friend’s earlier intervention, which was taken up. It is a serious point. The former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), made the point that pausing the roll-out of universal credit does not help anybody, given the positive effects it is having on getting people into work and allowing them to progress in the workplace. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made the point that this is both an in-work and out-of-work benefit. That means that those who are out of work and are thinking about taking a job can have the confidence to do so, because it will not mean throwing up in the air all their existing arrangements for paying for their house and supporting their family. They will have the confidence to take on that work and to take extra hours, because they know they will be better off and that if it does not work out they will not have to go back to the drawing board.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
One of the principal concerns about universal credit is what is happening to people’s housing costs. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that two-thirds of all private landlords now report that the people on universal credit they are renting to are in arrears? Will he support the call of housing charities for changes to be made to the roll-out of universal credit to make sure that when people take that step into work they do not put themselves at increased risk of losing their home? As currently envisaged, that is exactly what the roll-out will do.
Mr Harper
Let me address part of that point now and I will also come on to it later in my remarks. We should not compare universal credit with some mystical world of perfection; we should compare it with the existing system. Under the existing system, housing benefit is not perfect. There are lots of issues with housing benefit and tax credits in the existing benefit system. I understand that the citizens advice bureau has about 600,000 ongoing cases under the existing benefit system, so we are not talking about comparing universal credit with perfection. The existing system is not very good, does not work very well, and does not support people very well. Universal credit is an improvement.
On housing and the direct payment of landlords, which I know is controversial, my own view is that it is better to assume that people can manage their rent themselves. In cases where they cannot, and it is shown that they cannot, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green made it clear—as the Secretary of State did, with the roll-out of the housing portal—that we can deal with that. I do not think it is reasonable to assume that everybody on universal credit is incapable of managing their own money. That is what is assumed with the insistence on paying landlords directly. The other advantage of paying the person directly is that landlords cannot then discriminate against people who get housing benefit. If universal credit is paid directly to you and you make the payment, the landlord does not know that you are a benefit recipient and therefore cannot discriminate against you by having signs in the window saying, “I won’t take people on DSS,” which I know some landlords do.
Housing Benefit (Abolition of Social Sector Size Criteria)
Debate between Karen Buck and Mark Harper(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Harper
With the greatest respect, the period during which the housing benefit bill rose so fast, as the hon. Gentleman has just said, was of course when his party was in government. He is quite right about the need to build more houses, but housing starts fell to a historical low under Labour. We have actually increased the building of new homes. Nearly 500,000 homes have been built since 2010, and a further 275,000 affordable homes will be built from 2015 to 2020. More affordable homes are planned over the next Parliament than in any equivalent period in the past 20 years. The point he makes is right, but this Government have absolutely dealt with it. Overall, the changes we have made to housing benefit will save £6 billion during this Parliament.
The removal of the spare room subsidy is a key part of the reforms. Despite some outlandish claims about its effect, it is working. In the interim evaluation, half of those affected and unemployed had looked for a job, and one in five of them intended to plan to earn more. It was alleged that the change would move people into poverty. In fact, the figures show that thousands of those affected have moved into work.
Despite the Opposition’s scaremongering about evictions and arrears, the evidence has been to the contrary. The latest statistics show—[Interruption.] If we are to have a sensible debate about such matters, it would help if people did not make outlandish claims. I listened very carefully to the intervention by the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck). It is worth remembering that, when we discussed the benefit cap, she said that huge damage would be done to the 400,000-plus working households in private rented accommodation. However, we know from work that we published this week that 41% of people affected by the benefit cap are more likely to go into work. People are doing more to find work, and the policy has actually been very successful. In London, where the highest number of people are subject to the benefit cap, very few people have actually moved, and those who have moved have not moved great distances.
Ms Buck
Perhaps the Minister will explain to the House why, in the last year alone, there has been a rise of almost 30% in the number of households forced outside the area in which they originate? That is in contradiction to the advice given by Housing Ministers for years and years that homeless households should not be placed outside their local authority.
Mr Harper
It is simply not the case that people have been pushed out of London: 84% of the capped households in inner London that have moved continue to live in the central boroughs. The idea that hundreds of thousands of people would be forced out of London is simply not true.
Electoral Registration and Administration Bill
Debate between Karen Buck and Mark Harper(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Ms Buck
Does the Minister agree that this is an issue of proportionality? At the moment, approximately 6 million people are not on the electoral register. Does he recognise that the main issue of concern is not spread across the country as a whole but targeted in particular areas and on particular communities, particularly frequent movers? We already know that only one in six of the population who moves frequently is likely to be on the electoral register. Does that not reinforce the need for targeted investment to support individual registration, because otherwise it will be people in inner cities and in the private rented sector who lose out in not finding themselves on the electoral register?
Mr Harper
The hon. Lady makes a good point. As she says, the single piece of information that suggests whether someone is on the electoral register is frequency of movement. We recognise that, and several of the steps that we are taking with stakeholders are intended to work out how we can better deal with it. I will set out later how we propose to fund this and ensure that the money reaches local authorities, and if the hon. Lady thinks that I still have not dealt with the issue, I will take another intervention from her.
Mr Harper
Let me make a little more progress, then I will take more interventions.
Although there was widespread support for the principle of individual registration, concerns were raised about how our initial proposals might affect the completeness of the register. We have listened to those points and have made four significant changes to the initial proposals. Those changes are included in the Bill and we are confident that they will safeguard the completeness of the register as we move to the new system.
The first major change is that the Bill enables us to delay the timing of an annual canvass. There were concerns that in the initial proposals the gap between the last canvass under the old system and the start of the transition to individual registration was too long. It was thought to be preferable to carry out a full canvass in 2014, before sending electors individual invitations to register. We do not want to have an extra canvass, as that would be costly and confusing, but we intend to use this power to move the last canvass under the current system from autumn 2013 to spring 2014, so that the register is as up to date as possible before the transition to the new system.
Mr Harper
I have already allowed one intervention from the hon. Lady. Let me make some progress and I will take more interventions in a moment.
The second major change in the Bill will enable us to require electoral registration officers, instead of inviting everyone on their register to make a new application, to begin the transition by matching the names and addresses of every elector already on the register against the DWP’s customer information system. Where the name and address match, and the ERO therefore has confidence that a genuine person lives at the address that they say they live at, that person will be confirmed on the register and retained. They will be informed that they do not have to make an individual application to register. That means that we can balance the integrity of the register with not insisting that every voter takes action in the first transition.
Evidence from the data-matching pilots that we carried out last year suggests, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West mentioned, that the details of about two thirds of electors can be verified in that way. Today, I will place in the House of Commons Library the evaluations of the data-matching pilot by the Electoral Commission and my Department. Subject to parliamentary approval, we plan to run further data-matching pilots later this year to refine that method.
When an individual’s information cannot be verified, the electoral registration officer will invite them to register individually. They will be asked to make a new application and to provide their national insurance number and date of birth. As we set out last year, there will be reminders and the extensive use of door-to-door canvassing, as there is now, to encourage applications. If a person does not make a successful individual application, they will still be able to vote in the 2015 general election, as my hon. Friend said. However, any individual who wants to use an absent vote, where the risk is higher, will have to make a successful new application or to have been confirmed and retained on the register. That will ensure that people have greater confidence in the integrity of that election.