Department for Work and Pensions: Members’ Representations

Debate between Kate Osamor and Janet Daby

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.