Universal Credit Roll-out

Kirstene Hair Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Kirstene Hair (Angus) (Con)]

It is incredibly important to highlight the common ground when discussing how we ensure that as many people as possible are able to get into work. Let me be clear: there is absolutely nothing fair about keeping people dependent on welfare. I will start with two quotations:

“Universal Credit remains the right thing to do… and the prospect of an integrated benefit system that responds to people’s changing circumstances is a prize worth having.”

Universal credit is

“an important tool for tackling poverty”.

Those are not my words, but those of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation from April this year. In Scotland, the current Minister for Social Security, Jeane Freeman MSP, expressed disappointment last year that the completion date was as far back as 2022, so I find it strange that the SNP supports the halting of the roll-out today.

Universal credit is of particular importance to me because my constituency has a higher than average rate of unemployment, particularly among young people, and I am determined to see that rate reduce over the lifetime of this Parliament. Fortunately, universal credit is ensuring that more claimants are looking for and, crucially, succeeding in finding work than under jobseeker’s allowance. In 2015, 86% of those on universal credit were actively looking to work more hours, compared with only 38% under jobseeker’s allowance. The reason behind that is simple: JSA punished people who were looking to work more hours, but universal credit is designed to promote increased working hours.

However, we have to recognise that any major reform such as this will be challenging for users. The SNP should know all about roll-out issues—dare I mention the ongoing common agricultural policy payments fiasco in Scotland? This Government will adapt to ensure that any issues are addressed. It is of course right and proper that the Government take on the points being made about implementation and work to fix the issues that could see a good policy get damaged in the public eye through flawed delivery. Some have suggested today that universal credit makes claimants more likely to enter rent arrears, but clearly no one wants a policy to lead those whom it was designed to help to face further financial difficulty.

There is still some way to go before we can call this policy an unmitigated success, but the worst thing we could do is abandon or pause a policy that is helping people into work and return to a broken system that gave up on the unemployed when they most needed the Government’s help. After all, work is the most effective route out of poverty. It rewards the individual and allows them to regain purpose, routine and responsibility, enabling both society and the economy to prosper.